Inequality of Opportunity in Health Care in China: Suggestion on the Construction of the Urban-Rural Integrated Medical Insurance System

Jiawei Sun, Chao Ma, Ze Song and Hai Gu

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper investigates the urban-rural inequality of opportunity in health care in China based on the theory of equality of opportunity of Roemer (1998). Following the compensation principle proposed by Fleurbaey and Schokkaert (2011), this paper establishes a decomposition strategy of the fairness gap, which we use for the measurement of the inequality of opportunity in the urban-rural health care use. Empirical analysis using the CHNS data shows that the ratios of the fairness gap to the directly observed average urban-rural difference in health care are 1.167 during 1997-2000 and 1.744 during 2004-2006, indicating that the average urban-rural difference observed directly from original statistical data may underestimate the degree of the essential inequity. Meanwhile, the increasing fairness gap and the decomposition results imply that generally leveling the urban-rural reimbursement ratios is probably not sufficient, and pro-disadvantage policies should be put in place in order to mitigate or even eliminate the inequality of opportunity in health care use between urban and rural residents. The results are also illuminating for the experiments and establishment of the urban-rural integrated medical insurance system (URIMIS) in China. The pro-disadvantage policies will be more appreciated and effective in the promotion of the equality of opportunity in health care, within the background of urban-rural dualistic social structure and widening urban-rural income gap. This suggestion is supported by data from the URIMIS pilot regions in Jiangsu province. The results show that the fairness gap can be narrowed significantly via pro-disadvantage policies.

Keywords: equality of opportunity; health care; fairness gap; urban-rural integrated medical insurance system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 D63 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-ias, nep-iue and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/49389/1/MPRA_paper_49389.pdf original version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/49403/1/MPRA_paper_49403.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/52713/8/MPRA_paper_52713.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/65941/8/MPRA_paper_52713.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/65942/8/MPRA_paper_52713.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/65943/1/MPRA_paper_65943.pdf revised version (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:pra:mprapa:49389

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().