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A tale of two markets—would housing appreciation prompt insurance participation? Evidence from China’s urban elderly

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  • Han, Jiajun

Abstract

This paper investigates how housing wealth affects urban elderly’s commercial health insurance participation by using the discontinuity along housing size formed by China’s housing policies. The empirical results reveal a positive effect of housing wealth on urbanites’ enrolment in commercial health insurance, with elderly previously or currently working in non-public sectors, only having one child, and not having a son exhibiting higher responsiveness to unexpected gains in housing wealth. Moreover, the bumper housing wealth-induced insurance purchasing only takes effect for urban elderly having full homeownership, whereas those with partial ownership and tenants hardly react to housing policies.

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  • Han, Jiajun, 2024. "A tale of two markets—would housing appreciation prompt insurance participation? Evidence from China’s urban elderly," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:asieco:v:95:y:2024:i:c:s1049007824001337
    DOI: 10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101838
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Housing wealth; Commercial health insurance; China’s elderly; Regression discontinuity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D15 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Intertemporal Household Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving
    • I13 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Insurance, Public and Private
    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination

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