Renmin University of China Reports Findings in Health Services and Policy (Does income matter for the policy effect of public long-term care insurance on informal care use in China? A quasi-experimental study): Health and Medicine – Health Services and Policy

2024 MAY 22 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Daily China News -- New research on Health and Medicine - Health Services and Policy is the subject of a report. According to news reporting out of Beijing, People’s Republic of China, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “Since 2016, the Chinese government has been piloting a public long-term care insurance (LTCI) scheme. This study examined whether the LTCI scheme reduced the use of informal care and how this has varied across income groups.”

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the Renmin University of China, “We used data from the 2011, 2014, and 2018 waves of Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey, focusing on community-dwelling older adults aged 65 years and older. We used staggered difference-in-differences analyses with propensity score matching to examine the effects of the policy. The LTCI scheme reduced the probability and intensity of informal care use by 5.7% (< .05) and 17.4% (< .05), respectively. The policy impact was limited to older people in the middle-income group, reducing the probability and intensity of informal care use by 15.6% (< .001) and 43.1% (< .05), respectively. We did not find a statistically significant policy effect for older adults with high or low incomes. The LTCI scheme had different effects on reducing the informal care burden for family caregivers by income level.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “We suggest that the scheme should entitle people with low incomes to a preferential co-payment rate, thereby enhancing their access to formal care.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Does income matter for the policy effect of public long-term care insurance on informal care use in China? A quasi-experimental study. Journal of Health Services Research & Policy, 2024:13558196241252394. Journal of Health Services Research & Policy can be contacted at: Sage Publications Inc, 2455 Teller Rd, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320, USA.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting He Chen, School of Public Administration and Policy, Renmin University of China, Beijing, People’s Republic of China. Additional authors for this research include Jing Ning and Man Li.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1177/13558196241252394. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

Publisher contact information for the Journal of Health Services Research & Policy is: Sage Publications Inc, 2455 Teller Rd, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320, USA.

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