环境质量对中国城镇居民健康支出的影响

Analysis on the Effect of Environmental Quality on Health Expenditures

将工业二氧化硫排放量作为环境质量的代理变量,对中国各个地区分别建立面板数据模型,研究中国城镇居民医疗保健支出与居民收入和环境质量之间的长期均衡关系,并基于面板误差纠正模型来分析医疗支出对各影响因素的短期调节效应。实证结果表明,环境质量对医疗支出影响的长期弹性在我国东部、中部和西部各地区均为正值,说明环境污染的加剧导致人们健康状况的恶化,从而促进了医疗支出的增长。因此,做好环境保护工作应该具有长久坚持的意义。但是,从短期来看,环境质量对医疗支出的影响却为负值,这一结果解释了当前有些地区和部门在短期内会以牺牲环境为代价来换取经济的暂时发展,由此更加突显了做好环境保护工作的艰巨性与紧迫性。另一方面,居民收入对医疗保健支出影响的长期弹性和短期弹性均大于1,表明提高城镇居民收入水平对于改善居民健康状况具有显著作用,由此说明我国当前实施的工资增长机制、提高医疗补助政策具有其针对性和适宜性。

In this article, we take the industrial sulphur oxide emissions as a proxy variable for environmental quality, and develop panel data models for east,central and west China separately. We examine the role of environmental pollution and urban households＇ income in determining per capita health expenditures. We adopt a panel error correction approach to explore the possibility of investigating the reaction after a shock to this system. Our empirical analysis reveals that in the long run, the environmental quality exerts a statistically significant positive effect on health expenditures in any area of China, which implies that the seriousness of environmental pollution will result in the deterioration of households＇ health and the increase in the health expenditures. While the fact of negative shortrun impacts of environmental quality just provides some evidences for authorities and firms pursuing economic growth, regardless of environmental conservation. It is arduous, but also urgent to protect our environment. Both the longrun and the shortrun elasticities of households＇ income are all larger than one, which emphasizes the great significance of improving the urban households＇ income. Consequently, this article also gives evidence for improving the health subsidies from a policy point of view.