Empirical Analysis Of Urbanization On The Health Needs Of Residents

With the process of urbanization, its influence on social development, especially on people's health status, has attracted more and more attention. This paper is an empirical economic study in the effect of urbanization on the demand for health, which is based on Grossman's heath capital demand theory, using the data of the China Health and Nutrition Survey from 1991-2006. And then we compare the difference between the urban and rural samples, male and female samples to investigate the influencing mechanism of different factors on the demand for health. Our research indicates that the regression result of age, education, working status, insurance status, average income per capita, gender and martial status on health demand confirms to the Grossman's theoretical prediction. Urbanization level has significantly positive effect on the health demand, even after we have controlled the effect of population density, road mileage per capita and Beds per 10000 population. Urbanization process influenced the health status through increasing the income per capita, improving social security system and cultivating modern health awareness.The results of empirical research grouping by urban and rural areas indicated, education has a negative effect on the health status for people in urban areas, since working pressure has offset the positive effect of knowledge accumulation of health. Population density and road mileage per capita also have different influence on health demand.The results of empirical research grouping by gender indicated, with the sexual discrimination in Chinese traditional ideas, educated male people are significantly more healthy than those who are less educated, while there existed little difference between female people with different education years.