Liu Yuanli, Rao Keqin, Hsiao William C
Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
J Health Popul Nutr. 2003 Sep;21(3):216-22.
Thanks to continued economic growth and increasing income, the overall poverty rate has been on the decline in China. However, due to escalating medical costs and lack of insurance coverage, medical spending often causes financial hardship for many rural families. Using data from the 1998 China National Health Services Survey, the impact of medical expenditure on the poverty headcount for different rural regions was estimated. Based on the reported statistics on income alone, 7.22% of the whole rural sample was below the poverty line. Out-of-pocket medical spending raised this by more than 3 percentage points. In other words, medical spending raised the number of rural households living below the poverty line by 44.3%. Medical expenditure has become an important source of transient poverty in rural China.
得益于持续的经济增长和收入增加，中国的整体贫困率一直在下降。然而，由于医疗成本不断攀升以及缺乏保险覆盖，医疗支出常常给许多农村家庭带来经济困难。利用1998年中国国家卫生服务调查的数据，估算了医疗支出对不同农村地区贫困发生率的影响。仅根据所报告的收入统计数据，整个农村样本中有7.22%处于贫困线以下。自付医疗支出使这一比例提高了3个多百分点。换句话说，医疗支出使生活在贫困线以下的农村家庭数量增加了44.3%。医疗支出已成为中国农村临时性贫困的一个重要来源。
