The health implications of social pensions: Evidence from China's new rural pension scheme

Lingguo Cheng, Hong Liu, Ye Zhang and Zhong Zhao
Additional contact information
Lingguo Cheng: Institute for Advanced Research, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, China
Ye Zhang: School of Business, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

No 782, CEMA Working Papers from China Economics and Management Academy, Central University of Finance and Economics

Abstract: This paper estimates the causal effect of income on health outcomes of the elderly and in vestigates underlying mechanisms by exploiting an income change induced by the launch of China's New Rural Pension scheme (NRPS). Using this policy experiment, we address the endogeneity of pension income by applying a fixed-effect model with instrumental variable correction. The results reveal that pension enrollment and income from the NRPs both have had a significant beneficial impact on objective measures of physical health and cognitive function of the rural elderly. Pension recipients respond to the newly acquired pension income in multiple ways: improved nutrition intake, better accessibility to health care, increased informal care, increased leisure activities, and better self-perceived relative economic situation. These in turn act as channels from pension income to health outcomes of the Chinese rural elderly.

Keywords: Pension income; Health; Channels; Elderly; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H55 I12 I38 J14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-cna
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://down.aefweb.net/WorkingPapers/w782.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The health implications of social pensions: Evidence from China's new rural pension scheme (2018)
Working Paper: The Health Implications of Social Pensions: Evidence from China's New Rural Pension Scheme (2016)
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:cuf:wpaper:782

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEMA Working Papers from China Economics and Management Academy, Central University of Finance and Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Qiang Gao ().