空气质量与医疗费用支出——基于中国中老年人的微观证据

Air Quality and Health Care Expenditure——Evidence from Chinese Middle-Aged and Elderly Samples

本文将2004-2011年我国78个地级市空气质量监测的日度数据与中国老年健康影响因素跟踪调查(CLHLS)数据库进行匹配,采用了Heckman两阶段模型、工具变量的方法研究空气质量对医疗费用支出的影响。研究发现:空气质量更差的地区的人有更高的患病概率,当空气污染指数API超过100、150、200和300的天数每增加1天,医疗费用支出分别上涨5.5%、7.6%、9.1%和10.3%。通过比较南北方、住院和急诊、性别、年龄以及城乡差异的一系列稳健性检验表明,实证结果具有稳健性。

Our research merges air quality monitoring data from 2004 to 2011 with the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey(CLHLS)Dataset,and explores the air quality’s influence on the health care expenditure using Heckman Two Step Model and IV Model.Our findings indicate a higher risk of chronic diseases for those in areas with poor air quality,air pollution increases the probability of visiting hospital and health care expenditure.One additional day exposed to API over 100,150,200 and 300 raises health care expenditure by 5.5%,7.6%,9.1%and 10.3%,respectively.Our empirical results are tested with robustness.