Wang Hong, Zhang Licheng, Hsiao William
Yale University School of Public Health, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06520, USA.
Health Policy. 2006 Oct;78(2-3):167-77. doi: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2005.09.008. Epub 2005 Nov 2.
Ill health is very expensive and could have significant impact on household consumptions. The purpose of this study is to examine the differences in household consumption patterns among households with or without ill health family member(s) in rural China. We also examine the opportunity cost of ill health by estimating the marginal effects of medical spending on consumption patterns. The data used in this study are from the baseline survey of a community-based rural health insurance study in a poor rural area of China conducted in 2002. The unit of analysis in this study is the household; 4553 households are included in this survey. Fractional Logit model is used as our prediction model. Ill health is measured by the presence of hospitalization and presence of diagnosed chronic disease(s) in a household. Findings from this study reveal that ill health and medical expenditure reduces household investment in human capital, physical capital for farm production, and other consumptions that are critical to human well-being. Subgroup analysis displayed that the impacts of medical expenditure on household consumption patterns described above are more significant in low-income households than in high-income households. In addition, the decline of the percentages of other consumptions is much larger for households with hospitalization than for households with chronic diseases.
健康不佳成本高昂，可能会对家庭消费产生重大影响。本研究的目的是考察中国农村有或没有健康不佳家庭成员的家庭在消费模式上的差异。我们还通过估计医疗支出对消费模式的边际效应来考察健康不佳的机会成本。本研究使用的数据来自2002年在中国一个贫困农村地区进行的一项基于社区的农村健康保险研究的基线调查。本研究的分析单位是家庭；本次调查共纳入4553户家庭。我们使用分数对数模型作为预测模型。健康不佳通过家庭中是否有住院情况以及是否有确诊的慢性病来衡量。本研究的结果表明，健康不佳和医疗支出会减少家庭在人力资本、农业生产物质资本以及其他对人类福祉至关重要的消费方面的投资。亚组分析显示，医疗支出对上述家庭消费模式的影响在低收入家庭中比在高收入家庭中更为显著。此外，有住院情况的家庭其他消费支出百分比的下降幅度比有慢性病的家庭要大得多。
