Health Disparity between the Older Rural-to-Urban Migrant Workers and Their Rural Counterparts in China

Dan Li, Zhongliang Zhou, Chi Shen, Jian Zhang, Wei Yang and Rashed Nawaz
Additional contact information
Dan Li: School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Zhongliang Zhou: School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Chi Shen: School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Jian Zhang: School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Wei Yang: Health Science Center, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710061, China
Rashed Nawaz: School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 3, 1-16

Abstract: Background: China’s older rural-to-urban migrant workers (age 50 and above) are growing old, but comparative health research on older rural-to-urban migrants in China is still in its infancy. The aim is to explore the health status of older rural-to-urban migrant workers in China; as well as to identify health disparity between older rural-to-urban migrant workers and older rural dwellers. Methods: This study employed self-assessed health status (SAH) and chronic disease condition to explore the health status. Coarsened exact matching (CEM) was employed to improve estimation of causal effects. Fairlie’s decomposition analysis was conducted to find the health disparity. Results: Older rural-to-urban migrant workers were more prone to suffer from chronic diseases, but they had higher SAH when comparing older rural dwellers. Fairlie’s decomposition analysis indicated 10.44% of SAH disparities between two older groups can be traced to bath facility; 31.34% of chronic diseases disparities can be traced to educational attainment, sleeping time and medical scheme. Conclusions: This is the first comparative study examining health disparity focusing on older rural-to-urban migrant workers. Our study highlighted substantial health disparities between older rural-to-urban migrant workers and their older rural dwellers. Based on the contributing factors, government should take the drivers of health disparities into consideration in policy setting.

Keywords: health disparity; older rural-to-urban migrant workers; older rural dwellers; CEM (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/3/955/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/3/955/ (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:17:y:2020:i:3:p:955-:d:316212

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 ().