Liu Gordon G, Dow William H, Fu Alex Z, Akin John, Lance Peter
Department of Health Economics and Management, Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, Beijing, China.
J Health Econ. 2008 Jan;27(1):27-44. doi: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2007.05.001. Epub 2007 Jun 19.
This study provides empirical evidence regarding the income productivity of health human capital in China. We appeal to concepts from human capital theory to support a basic model that treats health as a form of human capital in the income production process. Our model examines the economic return at the household level from the health of its individual members. We estimate this with a longitudinal sample drawn from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), allowing us to exploit "within" variation in health and income to address possible unobservables biasing estimates of the impact of health on income in the simple cross-sectional setting. Household income is strongly influenced by the health of its members, particularly in rural areas. These findings could have important implications for health and economic policy-making aimed at reducing the long-standing urban-rural economic gap and more comprehensively insuring the rural population against health and economic risk.
本研究提供了关于中国健康人力资本收入生产率的实证证据。我们运用人力资本理论的概念来支持一个基本模型，该模型将健康视为收入生产过程中人力资本的一种形式。我们的模型考察了家庭层面个体成员健康状况所带来的经济回报。我们利用从中国健康与营养调查（CHNS）中抽取的纵向样本进行估计，这使我们能够利用健康和收入的“内部”差异，以解决在简单横截面设定中可能导致健康对收入影响估计出现偏差的不可观测因素。家庭收入受到其成员健康状况的强烈影响，尤其是在农村地区。这些发现可能对旨在缩小长期存在的城乡经济差距以及更全面地保障农村人口抵御健康和经济风险的健康与经济政策制定具有重要意义。
