29 research outputs found
Microeconomic analyses of the health of the elderly in China
No full textChina is currently facing unprecedented health challenges; non-communicable diseases (NCD) now account for 80 percent of its 10.3 million deaths annually. China’s growing health challenges arise, at least in part, due to its rapidly aging population and are compounded by its inadequate social security provision and rapid urbanization. This dissertation examines the extent to the health and well-being of the elderly in China are affected in the presence of these demographic and social changes. It uses data from a rich but relatively underutilized data source, the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). CHARLS is the first Health and Retirement Study (HRS) of its kind in China, and as such represents a rich source of data on health and well-being for the country. A two-province sample was piloted in 2008 and followed up in 2012, while a national wave was surveyed in 2011. This dissertation is a collection of three self-contained empirical studies on the health and well-being of the elderly in China. The first study examines the effect that chronic diseases have on different dimensions of health in a structural equation framework. The second study examines the extent to which elderly households are able to continue to finance their consumption in the presence of ill-health and the extent to which health insurance and family support from children play a role. In the last study, we further investigate the effect that adult children’s migration decisions have on the physical and subjective well-being of their elderly parents
Microeconomic analyses of the health of the elderly in China
No full textChina is currently facing unprecedented health challenges; non-communicable diseases (NCD) now account for 80 percent of its 10.3 million deaths annually. China’s growing health challenges arise, at least in part, due to its rapidly aging population and are compounded by its inadequate social security provision and rapid urbanization. This dissertation examines the extent to the health and well-being of the elderly in China are affected in the presence of these demographic and social changes. It uses data from a rich but relatively underutilized data source, the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). CHARLS is the first Health and Retirement Study (HRS) of its kind in China, and as such represents a rich source of data on health and well-being for the country. A two-province sample was piloted in 2008 and followed up in 2012, while a national wave was surveyed in 2011. This dissertation is a collection of three self-contained empirical studies on the health and well-being of the elderly in China. The first study examines the effect that chronic diseases have on different dimensions of health in a structural equation framework. The second study examines the extent to which elderly households are able to continue to finance their consumption in the presence of ill-health and the extent to which health insurance and family support from children play a role. In the last study, we further investigate the effect that adult children’s migration decisions have on the physical and subjective well-being of their elderly parents
Study on container linerroute optimization of Southeast Asia route of M Shipping Company
No full textThe impact of child migration on the health and well‐being of parents left behind
No full textThis paper uses data from the China Health and Retirement Survey to estimate the causal effect child out-migration has on the health of parents in China. For rural parents, we show that after controlling for self-selection, child out-migration has a detrimental effect not only on subjective well-being and mental health but also on cognitive function and physical health when measured using a series of clinical tests and health biomarkers. In contrast, for urban parents, only a few health effects are significant, and those that are tend to be positive. In terms of the mechanism through which migration affects parental health, we find that it is differences in the level of physical support that parents require that is central to explaining many of the health effects we observe. For those who require little physical support, the income effect helps to mitigate the negative effects associated with child out-migration, while for more vulnerable groups of parents, the economic benefits of migration are currently no substitute for the loss of informal support networks when a child migrates
The effect living arrangements and intergenerational support have on the incidence of catastrophic health expenditure: A microeconomic analysis for China
No full textThis paper uses data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) conducted in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2018 to examine the effect recent health and societal changes have had on the ability of households to manage the financial burden of disease. Although health insurance in China has undergone significant reforms over the past decade, out-of-pocket health spending is still widespread. In light of these gaps in the provision of health insurance, households are forced to rely on their adult children for support. We find that the type of support matters, with the incidence of catastrophic health expenditure being the lowest for parents who live in multigenerational households, where it is easier for children to provide directly accessible instrumental and emotional support. For households where there is no co-residence, local support (of the type provided by children who live in the same village/neighbourhood as their parents) is no substitute for the type of assistance (usually financial) that households receive when all their children live beyond the village/neighbourhood
The Impacts of Depression and Chronic Diseases on the Health of Older Adults in China:Evidence in a System Equations Framework
No full textDepression comorbid with chronic diseases is common, especially among the older adults. We examine the health of the older adults in China and its relationship with depression, alone or as a comorbidity with chronic diseases. The sample we study includes 10,307 individuals aged 45 or above from the 2011 national wave of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Using factor analysis, we obtain three factors out of eight health measurements that capture multiple dimensions of health of an older adult, with which we construct health scores and use as outcome variables. The three factors obtained from the factor analysis can, respectively, be interpreted as ‘physical health’, ‘subjective health’ and ‘cognitive health’. We then apply a system equations approach to compare the disease effects. We find different chronic conditions are significantly associated with ‘physical health’ and ‘subjective health’ but not with ‘cognitive health’. While the key chronic diseases have similar adverse effects on the first two health factors (except for the respiratory diseases), depression impairs subjective and physical health scores to a greater degree than do any chronic diseases. Comorbid depression is significantly associated with a reduction in the physical health score of the older adults, particularly for those with depression and cardiovascular diseases. In light of the increasing burden of chronic diseases and the underfunding-undertreatment situation of depression, health insurance coverage for depression should be improved to provide a more integrated mental health system
Health literacy and its effect on chronic disease prevention: evidence from China’s data
No full textBackground: Improving health literacy is an important public health goal in many countries. Although many studies have suggested that low health literacy has adverse effects on an individual’s health outcomes, confounding factors are often not accounted. This paper examines the interplay between health literacy and chronic disease prevention.
Methods: A population-based sample of 8194 participants aged 15–69 years old in Ningbo were used from China’s 2017 National Health Literacy Surveillance Data. We use multivariate regression analysis to disentangle the relationship between health literacy and chronic disease prevention.
Results: We find the association between health literacy and the occurrence of the first chronic condition is attenuated after we adjust the results for age and education. This might arise because having one or more chronic conditions is associated with better knowledge about chronic diseases, thus improve their health literacy. More importantly, we find health literacy is associated with a reduction in the likelihood of having a comorbid condition. However, this protective effect is only found among urban residents, suggesting health literacy might be a key factor explaining the rural-urban disparity in health outcomes.
Conclusion: Our findings highlight the important role of health literacy in preventing comorbidities instead of preventing the first chronic condition. Moreover, family support could help improve health literacy and result in beneficial effects on health
Health knowledge about smoking, role of doctors, and self-perceived health: a cross-sectional study on smokers’ intentions to quit
No full textLimited empirical work has been done to compare the effects that health knowledge and advice from doctors have on smokers’ intentions to quit. This paper examines the association of smokers’ intentions to quit with health knowledge, advice from doctors, and self-perceived health. A sample of 2509 smokers aged 15–69 years old in Ningbo was used from China’s National Health Literacy Surveillance survey, conducted in 2018 and 2019. Respondents were asked whether they agree smoking causes stroke, heart attack, lung cancer; and heart diseases in adults, lung illnesses in children, and lung cancer in adults, by secondhand smoke, respectively. Using the logistic model, we found that knowing that smoking causes stroke and lung cancer more than doubles the odds of one’s intention to quit (OR = 2.705, p < 0.01), the effect of which is much greater than knowing that smoking causes lung cancer only (OR = 1.795, p < 0.01). Doctors’ advice to quit is more important than health knowledge, in terms of predicting smokers’ past cessation behaviours. In addition, smokers’ self-perceived health is negatively associated with their decisions to quit. This paper highlights that more resources should be directed towards training health care providers to advise smokers to quit, which might be more effective than health education alone
Sand Screenout Early Warning Models Based on Combinatorial Neural Network and Physical Models
No full textSand screenout is a critical challenge in hydraulic fracturing, affecting both the construction process and operational safety. This paper proposes a sand screenout warning model that integrates a combinatorial neural network and physical approaches to enhance both the speed and accuracy of sand screenout warnings. Firstly, the combined neural network uses a Transformer to capture key features during fracturing construction from historical data, and the extracted features are input to the Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) for temporal prediction and the Crested Porcupine Optimizer (CPO) to further optimise the GRU-Transformer hyperparameters of the model. Additionally, the physical model improves the conventional inverse slope method by incorporating a threshold and sliding module, which enhances slope calculation and warning accuracy. The results showed that for fracturing pressure prediction, the proposed CPO-GRU-Transformer model obtained an RMSE value of 0.842 MPa, MAE of 0.613 Mpa, and R2 of 0.971, a smaller RMSE and MAE and a larger R2 than the three pressure prediction models, namely LSTM, GRU, and CPO-GRU. The proposed sand screenout warning model has been applied in the field construction of the U shale gas area in the Sichuan Basin. The warning points of the model proposed in this study were advanced by 73.5 s on average compared with the manual warning points in the three validated fracturing segments, with a successful warning rate of 85.71%, which greatly avoids the possibility of sand screenout and provides a method of fast calculation speed and high prediction accuracy, providing an early warning of sand screenout
