Study On The Influence Of Hamily Intergenerational Support On Medical Consumption Of The Elderly

Against the background of the aging population in China,the proportion of medical consumption in China's household consumption is also getting higher and higher,especially the proportion of medical consumption of the elderly is also growing.Most domestic and foreign scholars' research on medical consumption are mostly macroscopic.There are few factors that affect medical consumption from the perspective of family or individual.In addition,the current state medical consumption of the elderly is becoming more and more important.Research on medical consumption of the elderly is necessary.For the elderly,the intergenerational interaction between families can significantly affect their physical and mental health.This paper starts with the intergenerational support of the family to study its impact on the medical consumption of the elderly.Family intergenerational support has two meanings from the perspective of acquisition and provision,traditional intergenerational support and downward intergenerational support.Traditional intergenerational support mainly refers to children as legal and compulsory persons responsible for supporting elderly parents,such as providing financial assistance,daily care and emotional interaction for parents.Downward intergenerational support refers to the support that older parents provide for adult children,including financial support for children,housework support,and support for grandchildren.Based on the 2015 China Health Pension Tracking Survey data,this paper conducts negative binomial regression and Probit regression empirical analysis on sample data under the guidance of health resource demand model and health service utilization model.The study found that providing financial support of children will increase the probability and frequency of elderly people going to the clinic,and the outpatient consumption will increase significantly.The non-economic support of children will reduce the probability and frequency of the elderly going to the clinic,and the outpatient consumption will be significantly reduced.It shows that the intergenerational support of the offspring has a significant impact on the outpatient consumption of the elderly,but the children's care for the elderly can squeeze out the needs of the elderly to use some medical services.Among the factors affecting outpatient consumption,it is also found that the elderly's financial support for children significantly negatively affects the outpatient consumption of the elderly,indicating that the greater the amount of money the elderly give to their children,the more likely they are to squeeze out the outpatient consumption of the elderly.Compared with hospital consumption,outpatient consumption is usually a mild disease,and can reflect the prevention awareness of the disease to some extent,so this result may be the result of the effect of income and health.The non-economic support given to children has a significant negative impact on the elderly,which is reflected in the significant increase in the probability and frequency of outpatient and hospitalization for the elderly who give non-economic support to their children.Under the results of this study,this paper proposes several policy recommendations for different situations:strengthening medical insurance protection and increasing the coverage of commercial critical illness insurance;establishing a special tax deduction system for children to bear medical consumption expenditures for their parents;Setting up nursing homes to alleviate the daily physical burden of the elderly;strengthen health education publicity to raise the awareness of the elderly health care.