Can Long-Term Care Insurance Pilot Promote Rural Women’s Employment ?

In June 2016,the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security issued the Guiding Opinions on the Pilot of the Long-term Care Insurance System,marking the official start of the pilot of the long-term care insurance system in China,and has achieved remarkable results in the two rounds of pilot so far.The first round of pilot projects selected 15 cities and 2 key contact provinces.As long-term care insurance was selected by more people and gradually developed and expanded,in September2020,the National Health Insurance Bureau,together with the Ministry of Finance,issued the Guiding Opinions on Expanding the Pilot of Long-term Care Insurance System.Based on the first pilot projects of long-term care insurance system in 2016,the scope of the second round of pilot projects was further expanded to 49 cities,It is expected to better promote the development of long-term care insurance.By the end of June 2022,long-term care insurance has covered 145 million people,with a total of1.78 million people enjoying the benefits of the insurance.A large number of documents have explored the pilot status and effectiveness of long-term care insurance in China.There is no doubt that long-term care insurance can bring benefits to the disabled elderly and their families.However,in addition to the welfare effects for the disabled elderly,this paper wants to explore the positive external effects of long-term care insurance,that is,whether it can promote the employment of rural women-through income effects,substitution effects and providing jobs.In order to obtain evidence at the micro level,under the theoretical mechanism of traditional personal utility function and consumption budget constraint,this paper selects the data of CHARLS in 2015 and 2018,selects the work status variable to construct the explained variable,and selects the double difference model in the empirical part to study how long-term care insurance affects rural women’s employment.The main conclusions are as follows:Long-term nursing insurance has a significant role in promoting rural women’s employment.After replacing the explained variable with the potential working time for the robustness test,the empirical results are still consistent with the previous article.Secondly,the impact of long-term care insurance on rural women’s employment is heterogeneous.The policy effect of long-term nursing insurance on middle-aged people is more obvious;The policy effect on the eastern and central regions is more obvious.At the same time,on the basis of the previous article,a number of policy recommendations were put forward,providing policy inspiration for the government to optimize and improve long-term care insurance.