The Largest Insurance Expansion in History: Saving One Million Lives Per Year in China

Jonathan Gruber, Mengyun Lin and Junjian Yi

No 31423, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) rolled out in China from 2003-2008 provided insurance to 800 million rural Chinese. We combine aggregate mortality data with individual survey data, and identify the impact of the NCMS from program rollout and heterogeneity across areas in their rural share. We find that there was a significant decline in aggregate mortality, with the program saving more than one million lives per year at its peak, and explaining 78% of the entire increase in life expectancy in China over this period. We confirm these mortality effects using micro-data on mortality, other health outcomes, and utilization.

JEL-codes: H4 I13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-fdg and nep-hea
Note: AG CH DEV EH LS PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w31423.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31423

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w31423

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().