Health disparity among older adults in urban China: Does labor migration matter

Zehan Pan, Feiyang Yang, Nan Yang and Riming Nie

Social Science & Medicine, 2025, vol. 371, issue C

Abstract: China has seen a surge in labor migration and widening regional health disparities among urban older residents since the late 1990. However, the relationship between labor migration and these disparities remains unknown. This study employs the shift-share instrument method to explore the association between labor migration and the self-rated health among urban older residents with the microdata from the 1% National Population Sample Survey (2005 and 2015) and provincial panel data (2010–2020). The results indicate that regions with higher net labor inflow exhibit improved average health levels and reduced health inequality among local older adults with varying socioeconomic statuses. Between 2010 and 2015, labor migration led to a 9.21 percentage point increase in the regional disparity of self-rated “healthy” probabilities among urban older residents. The key mechanism underlying these effects is the positive effects of labor migration on the wellbeing of certain group of urban older residents. The findings of this study suggest that social benefits access inequality between migrants and non-migrants, and the health disparities among urban older adults underscore broader structural inequality in China.

Keywords: Labor migration; Health disparities; Urban older adults; Social benefits; Shift-share instrument (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953625002540
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:socmed:v:371:y:2025:i:c:s0277953625002540

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117925

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().