Empirical Analysis Of Influencing Factors Of Residents' Medical Expenses,

With the reform and opening up, the inhabitant's standard of living has improved to a large extent, but the burden of medical expenditure has also enhanced; in addition, situation such as the urban-rural dual economic structure, urbanization, transition of medical policies and population aging have significant influence on medical service demand. To study these, the paper employing panel data from 31 China provinces between 2003 and 2008 to analysis medical expenditure and its influencing factors. For the model, the paper employs the empirical method of measuring income elasticity while considering other factors. Furthermore, the paper employs regression for urban and rural areas, adds variables such as urbanization rate, birth rate, government budget, which make the research of medical expenditure more accurate.The research outcome shows that the urban area has an elasticity of 0.68 and the rural area has an elasticity of 1.23.While measuring income elasticity, the paper finds the coefficient estimate of urbanization are statistically positive significant with both urban and rural medical expenditure. Birth rate and length of stay in hospital are statistically positive significant with urban medical expenditure. And the population aging and number of doctors are significant positive with rural expenditures. Education and government medical budget are not significant with either rural or urban expenditure.