| China is the largest country in the ageing population in the world,and is also one of the fastest ageing countries in the world.More and more elderly people have reached or exceeded the retirement age,they are still active in the labor market.Some of them work to reduce family expenditure,some to reduce government pension expenditure,and some to achieve personal ideals.But there are also some elderly people who work endlessly and insist on working with illness in exchange for their income at the expense of their welfare level.It is very necessary to understand what happens when the health status of the elderly deteriorates,and how the government coordinates the health,welfare and social pension burden of the elderly.What is the impact of the health status of the elderly on their own labor supply and through what mechanisms;whether the health status of the elderly will have an impact on the labor supply behavior of other family members,and if so,what is the mechanism of action? These problems are urgent and important in the labor supply of the elderly under the background of population aging.From the theoretical point of view,the health status of the elderly people determine whether they can provide labor force,turn the pressure of elderly people support into human resource power to create social wealth,provide experience for other countries to achieve healthy aging and active aging,and enrich the existing research on the supply of elderly labor.From the practical point of view,the health status of the elderly not only has an impact on their own labor supply,but also on the labor supply behavior of other family members,which can provide decision-making basis for policy makers in the process of formulating pension and medical security policies.The research ideas of this paper were as follows: firstly,raising questions,secondly,constructing theoretical models,thirdly,describing the current situation,fourthly,empirical testing,fifth,policy intervention.The scientific research in this paper was that the influence of the health status of the elderly on their own and other family members’ labor supply behavior.The theoretical model of this paper was based on the labor-leisure model and the theory of healthy human capital.The health factors were taken as endogenous variables to analyze the labor supply behavior of the elderly.The health investment of the elderly requires money and time,which affected the labor supply behavior of themselves and other family members.This paper analyzed the health status of the elderly at first,and then analyzed the group heterogeneity of the health status within the elderly group.This paper studied the scale and structure of the elderly employment population,and found out how many elderly people were continuing to work,what group characteristics they had,what aspects of work they were engaged in,and the distribution of working hours.The next part of this paper was an empirical test of the impact of health status on the labor supply of the elderly,which was divided into two aspects.Firstly,we studied the influence of the health status of the elderly on their own labor supply behavior.The effect of health on labor participation and supply time was analyzed by using self-rated health status as a measurement index of the health of the elderly.Considering the measurement error brought by self-reported health status,the elderly’s ability of daily activities was used to replace the self-rated health measurement indicators for robustness test.Secondly,we studied the impact of the health status of the elderly on their spouses’ labor supply behavior.Empirical analysis was conducted to examine whether the labor supply of the elderly to their spouses increased or decreased after the illness.Taking stomach disease or other digestive system diseases of the elderly as exogenous health risk shocks,the endogenous problem of the model was solved by Coarsened Exact Matching and Generalized Difference-In-Difference Regressions With Individual Fixed Effect.The conclusions of this study are as follows: Firstly,Based on China’s census data and China’s labor statistics,this paper estimated that in 2015,the number of elderly people over 60 years of age engaged in remunerative market labor in China reached 59.57 million.China had26.09 million elderly people aged 65 and over.China had the largest working elderly population in the world.The employment rate of the elderly aged 60 and above in China was 26.83%,and that of the elderly aged 65 and above was 18.13%.Compared with the western developed countries,the employment rate of the elderly was not high,and there was still room for further improvement and development in the future.Secondly,The overall health of the elderly in China was good.About 80% of the elderly were healthy.They did not need to rely on others in their daily life.On the contrary,they can work for their families and society.The group structure of the health status of the elderly showed that the health status of the young male elderly were significantly better than other groups.Thirdly,The health status of the elderly had a significant positive impact on their own labor supply.On the premise of controlling other influencing factors,the labor participation rate of the elderly with excellent health status and good grade were 8.6% higher than that of the general,poor and very poor grade,and the average annual labor supply time is 454.715 hours longer.Fourthly,The health status of different elderly groups had obvious heterogeneity on the impact of labor supply.The labor participation rate of the rural elderly dued to the health difference was greater than that of the urban,but the response of the working time of the rural elderly who had participated in the labor to the change of health status was smaller than that of the urban.The influence of health difference on the labor participation rate of the male elderly was greater than that of the female,and the decrease of health condition leaded to the decrease of the average annual labor hours of the male elderly more than that of the female.The influence of health status on the labor force participation and working time of the aged 60-80 is greater than that of the aged over 80Fifthly,The changes in the health status of the elderly not only had an impact on their own labor supply behavior,but also on their spouses’ labor supply.When the elderly got sick,the labor supply of their spouses decreased.The conclusion showed that the elderly gave up market labor in order to care for the sick spouse,which reflected the care effect.The decrease of the labor supply of the husband caused by the illness of the husband was greater than that caused by the illness of the wife.According to the research conclusion,the following suggestions were put forward.Firstly,the health status of the elderly was the precondition for their engagement in all activities.Therefore,we should pay full attention to the health promotion of the elderly.Secondly,the elderly had the willingness and ability to continue to work,so the government,society,enterprises and families should create more employment opportunities for the elderly.Thirdly,we should pay attention to the welfare level of the elderly themselves and their families,especially the welfare loss caused by work when the elderly were ill,and the decrease of income and physical and mental exhaustion caused by the care effect of family members. |
PDF Full Text Request