Elderly Health Inequality in China and its Determinants: A Geographical Perspective

Chenjing Fan, Wei Ouyang, Li Tian, Yan Song and Wensheng Miao
Additional contact information
Chenjing Fan: School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Wei Ouyang: School of Public Administration, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China
Li Tian: School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Yan Song: Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3140, USA
Wensheng Miao: China Research Center on Aging, Beijing 100054, China

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 16, 1-18

Abstract: Inter-regional health differences and apparent inequalities in China have recently received significant attention. By collecting health status data and individual socio-economic information from the 2015 fourth sampling survey of the elderly population in China (4th SSEP), this paper uses the geographical differentiation index to reveal the spatial differentiation of health inequality among Chinese provinces. We test the determinants of inequalities by multilevel regression models at the provincial and individual levels, and find three main conclusions: 1) There were significant health differences on an inter-provincial level. For example, provinces with a very good or good health rating formed a good health hot-spot region in the Yangtze River Delta, versus elderly people living in Gansu and Hainan provinces, who had a poor health status. 2) Nearly 2.4% of the health differences in the elderly population were caused by inter-provincial inequalities; access (or lack of access) to economic, medical and educational resources was the main reason for health inequalities. 3) At the individual level, inequalities in annual income served to deepen elderly health differences, and elderly living in less developed areas were more vulnerable to urban vs. rural-related health inequalities.

Keywords: Elderly health; health inequality; geographical differentiation; multilevel regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/16/2953/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/16/2953/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:16:p:2953-:d:258295

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().