IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/serxxx/v64y2019i03ns021759081650017x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Health Insurance And Medical Impoverishment In Rural China: Evidence From Guizhou Province

Author

Listed:
  • YUMEI ZHANG

    (Agricultural Information Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, #12 Zhong Guan Cun Nan Da Jie, Haidian District, Beijing, China, 100081, China)

  • MATEUSZ J. FILIPSKI

    (Development Strategy and Governance Division, International Food Policy Research Institute, 2033 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20815, USA)

  • KEVIN Z. CHEN

    (International Food Policy Research Institute, #12 Zhong Guan Cun Nan Da Jie, Haidian District, CAAS, Mailbox F16, Beijing, China, 100081, China)

Abstract

We analyze the effects of the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) on poverty, using micro-level household data from 17 villages in a poor area of China’s Guizhou province. A four-wave panel dataset allows us to follow NCMS through its reforms. First-order impact assessments suggest NCMS helps reduce the poverty rate by up to 3 percentage points, and the poverty gap by up to 15 percentage points. It also reduces the contribution of health expenditures to inequality as measured by Gini coefficient. The benefits of NCMS in terms of poverty and inequality appear considerably larger after major reforms in 2009, which expanded benefits and coverage.

Suggested Citation

  • Yumei Zhang & Mateusz J. Filipski & Kevin Z. Chen, 2019. "Health Insurance And Medical Impoverishment In Rural China: Evidence From Guizhou Province," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 64(03), pages 727-745, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:serxxx:v:64:y:2019:i:03:n:s021759081650017x
    DOI: 10.1142/S021759081650017X
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S021759081650017X
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S021759081650017X?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Heshmati, Almas, 2004. "A Review of Decomposition of Income Inequality," IZA Discussion Papers 1221, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Yip, Winnie & Hsiao, William C., 2009. "Non-evidence-based policy: How effective is China's new cooperative medical scheme in reducing medical impoverishment?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 201-209, January.
    3. Shorrocks, A F, 1982. "Inequality Decomposition by Factor Components," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(1), pages 193-211, January.
    4. Mike Brewer & Liam Wren-Lewis, 2016. "Accounting for Changes in Income Inequality: Decomposition Analyses for the UK, 1978–2008," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 78(3), pages 289-322, June.
    5. Hongmei Yi & Linxiu Zhang & Kim Singer & Scott Rozelle & Scott Atlas, 2009. "Health insurance and catastrophic illness: a report on the New Cooperative Medical System in rural China," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(S2), pages 119-127, July.
    6. Xiaoyan Lei & Wanchuan Lin, 2009. "The New Cooperative Medical Scheme in rural China: does more coverage mean more service and better health?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(S2), pages 25-46, July.
    7. XING, Li & FAN, Shenggen & LUO, Xiaopeng & ZHang, Xiaobo, 2009. "Community poverty and inequality in western China: A tale of three villages in Guizhou Province," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 338-349, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shasha Zhang & Qian Liu & Xungang Zheng & Juan Sun, 2023. "Internet Use and the Poverty Vulnerability of Rural Households: From the Perspective of Risk Response," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-17, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jinjing Wu & Shelby Deaton & Boshen Jiao & Zohn Rosen & Peter A Muennig, 2018. "The cost-effectiveness analysis of the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme in China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(12), pages 1-13, December.
    2. Lingguo Cheng & Hong Liu & Ye Zhang & Ke Shen & Yi Zeng, 2015. "The Impact of Health Insurance on Health Outcomes and Spending of the Elderly: Evidence from China's New Cooperative Medical Scheme," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(6), pages 672-691, June.
    3. Chen, Yi & Shi, Julie & Zhuang, Castiel Chen, 2019. "Income-dependent impacts of health insurance on medical expenditures: Theory and evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 290-310.
    4. Hong Wang & Yu Liu & Yan Zhu & Lei Xue & Martha Dale & Heather Sipsma & Elizabeth Bradley, 2012. "Health Insurance Benefit Design and Healthcare Utilization in Northern Rural China," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-7, November.
    5. Colin Green & Bruce Hollingsworth & Miaoqing Yang, 2021. "The impact of social health insurance on rural populations," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 22(3), pages 473-483, April.
    6. Teixidó Figueras, Jordi & Duro Moreno, Juan Antonio, 2012. "Ecological Footprint Inequality: A methodological review and some results," Working Papers 2072/203168, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    7. Anton I. Votinov & Samvel S. Lazaryan & Vyacheslav N. Ovchinnikov, 2019. "Regression-Based Decomposition of Income Inequality Factors in Russia," Finansovyj žhurnal — Financial Journal, Financial Research Institute, Moscow 125375, Russia, issue 5, pages 74-89, October.
    8. Shenggen Fan & Ravi Kanbur & Shang-Jin Wei & Xiaobo Zhang, 2013. "The Economics of China: Successes and Challenges," NBER Working Papers 19648, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Iryna Kyzyma & Alessio Fusco & Philippe Van Kerm, 2022. "Distributional Change: Assessing the Contribution of Household Income Sources," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 84(1), pages 158-184, February.
    10. Chen, Yuyu & Jin, Ginger Zhe, 2012. "Does health insurance coverage lead to better health and educational outcomes? Evidence from rural China," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 1-14.
    11. Esteban A. Nicolini & Fernando Ramos Palencia, 2016. "Decomposing income inequality in a backward pre-industrial economy: Old Castile (Spain) in the middle of the eighteenth century," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 69(3), pages 747-772, August.
    12. Huang, Wei & Liu, Hong, 2023. "Early childhood exposure to health insurance and adolescent outcomes: Evidence from rural China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    13. Denisa M. Sologon & Philippe Kerm & Jinjing Li & Cathal O’Donoghue, 2021. "Accounting for differences in income inequality across countries: tax-benefit policy, labour market structure, returns and demographics," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 19(1), pages 13-43, March.
    14. Li, Xue & Smyth, Russell & Yao, Yao, 2023. "Extreme temperatures and out-of-pocket medical expenditure: Evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    15. Zhou, Xu Dong & Li, Lu & Hesketh, Therese, 2014. "Health system reform in rural China: Voices of healthworkers and service-users," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 134-141.
    16. Muszyńska Joanna & Oczki Jarosław & Wędrowska Ewa, 2018. "Income Inequality in Poland and the United Kingdom. Decomposition of the Theil Index," Folia Oeconomica Stetinensia, Sciendo, vol. 18(1), pages 108-122, June.
    17. Sanjoy Chakravorty & S. Chandrasekhar & Karthikeya Naraparaju, 2019. "Land Distribution, Income Generation and Inequality in India's Agricultural Sector," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 65(S1), pages 182-203, November.
    18. Li, Cheng & Yu, Xuan & Butler, James R.G. & Yiengprugsawan, Vasoontara & Yu, Min, 2011. "Moving towards universal health insurance in China: Performance, issues and lessons from Thailand," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 359-366, August.
    19. Heshmati, Almas, 2004. "Data Issues and Databases Used in Analysis of Growth, Poverty and Economic Inequality," IZA Discussion Papers 1263, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Guanfu Fang & Xin Li & Tianyu Tang, 2024. "Growing up without health insurance: Evidence from rural China," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(2), pages 363-390, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:serxxx:v:64:y:2019:i:03:n:s021759081650017x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/ser/ser.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.