Medical Expenditure And Its Influencing Factors In The Elderly

In recent years,the acceleration of aging problems appear more and more serious trend,there have been 68 countries in the world has entered into an aging society.And with the world's average life expectancy increases,the ratio of the elderly population will continue to increase.As the world's most populous country,China has entered an aging society in 2010.Aging population in China is not only huge,but development is very fast,which brought a lot of other issues,including the elderly health problems.The medical expenses of old people in China grew faster than the economic growth rate that brought a big burden to the country.In addition,the medical expense will also bring a lot of p1ressure to the elders.How to solve the problem of the elderly health care costs become a huge challenge for the medical and health industry in China.Combining with Grossman health capital demand theory and the research results of scholars at home and abroad,this paper divided the elderly medical consumption data into two aspects,the decision-making behavior and health care expenditure,and proposed hypothesis of the influence factors of the elderly medical consumption in our country,then described the changes of the distribution of the two aspects in different population,health and socioeconomic characteristics by descriptive statistics,and studied respectively the influencing factors of the decision-making behavior and health care expenditure of the elders.Finally,the following main conclusions are drawn:Gender,age,pension insurance,chronic diseases,disability and self-reported health status have a significant impact on the elderly medical treatment decisions.Female elderly sick visits probability is lower than elderly men.And the higher the age means the higher probability of treatment.There is the probability of pension insurance for the elderly doctor about 2.98%higher than those without pension insurance for the elderly.Chronically ill and disabled will increase the rate of the elderly disease doctor probability.Finally,poorer self-reported health of the elderly will be higher probability of treatment.Urban and rural status,area of residence,annual income,pensions insurance and self-reported health status have a significant impact on the elderly medical expenses.Compared to the rural elderly,urban elderly consume less medical expenses 0.2281 units(logarithmic).Living in the eastern region has promoting effect to the elderly health expense.High income group of older adults have significant positive effects on medical expenses.The elderly having pension insurance make less consumption of medical expenses 0.3479 units(logarithmic)on average.Self-reported health status is generally which reduce medical expense,and self-reported health is very bad that lead to the elderly consume more medical expenses.Finally,based on the research results and some of the real situation in our country,this paper put forward some policy suggestions to hope that can not only improve the elderly health,but also inhibit the overly growth of medical costs.