外资流入与居民健康异质性

Foreign Direct Investment and Heterogeneity of Population Health

本文采用2009—2017年涵盖149个国家(地区)、80多万受访者的盖乐普世界民意调查数据,实证检验了外商直接投资(FDI)对东道国居民健康的影响、作用机制与受益群体异质性。研究结果表明:FDI对东道国居民健康具有显著的促进作用,但是会随着人均GDP的增加逐渐减弱,即使在一系列稳健性检验后,这一结论依然成立;FDI流入可以有效提高东道国居民的医疗服务可及性,直接改善居民健康状况,也可以通过引致东道国居民收入增加和收入差距扩大间接影响居民健康水平;与预期不同,环境污染的间接影响并不显著;居民异质性检验结果显示,低收入者、低教育群体和女性等弱势群体受益更多。

This paper empirically examined the impacts of FDI on population health and its mechanism,and then investigated the heterogeneity of beneficiary groups in host countries by using Gallup World Poll dataset which includes 149 countries and more than800,000 respondents from 2009 to 2017. This paper finds that FDI significantly improves the population health of host countries,but the improvement gradually decreases with the increase of GDP per capita. Even after a series of robustness checks,the results still stand. Moreover,FDI significantly and directly affects population health by increasing the accessibility of medical services,and indirectly affects it by increasing resident income and widening income inequality for residents in host countries. However,contrary to expectation,the indirect impact of environmental pollution is insignificant. Heterogeneity test of beneficiary groups shows that such vulnerable groups as low-income residents,unskilled workers and women benefit more from the health improvement induced by FDI.