Public Health Insurance, Non-Farm Labor Supply, and Farmers’ Income: Evidence from New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme
1
Research Institute for Agriculture, Farmer and Rural Society in China, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, NO.777, Guoding Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai 200433, China
2
Institute of Finance and Economics, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, NO.777, Guoding Road, Yangpu District, Shanghai 200433, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16(23), 4865; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16234865
Received: 6 November 2019 / Revised: 26 November 2019 / Accepted: 3 December 2019 / Published: 3 December 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Health, Ageing and the Labour Market)
The major source of income of Chinese farmers is non-farm income, especially wages and salaries. Based on the economics theory of health and healthcare, their non-farm labor supply behavior could be affected by health insurance policies. The work presented in this paper focuses on the impact of the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme (NRCMS) on farmers’ non-farm labor supply behavior in China. A four-part model regression approach was used to examine the relationship. Our dataset comprised of 8273 people, aged 45 or above, from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) conducted in 2011 and 2013. The empirical results showed that NRCMS significantly reduced non-farm labor force participation and employment. Compared to non-participants of the NRCMS, the non-farmer labor time of these participants reduced, but the supplementary medical insurance and immediate reimbursement of the NRCMS increased the participants’ non-farm labor time. Our results have contributed to the reform of China’s public health insurance and farms’ income growth, and it would be necessary to actively promote immediate reimbursement, gradually simplify reimbursement procedures for medical treatment in non-registered places, and eliminate the non-portability of NRCMS.
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Keywords:
New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme (NRCMS); non-farm labor supply; farmers’ income; non-portability
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Liu, J.; Lu, Y.; Xu, Q.; Yang, Q. Public Health Insurance, Non-Farm Labor Supply, and Farmers’ Income: Evidence from New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019, 16, 4865.
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