Researchers from Wuhan University Describe Research in Public Health (Effect of long-term care insurance policy on depression in non-disabled people: evidence from China): Health and Medicine – Public Health

Health Policy and Law Daily

2024 APR 22 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- A new study on public health is now available. According to news reporting originating from Wuhan University by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Policy effect might be multidimensional and spill over to non-recipients.”

Funders for this research include The General Program of The National Natural Science Foundation of China; The Planning Fund Project of The Ministry of Education of The People’s Republic of China; The Fundamental Research Funds For The Central Universities; The Self-set Project of The Key Research Institute of Humanities And Social Sciences of The Ministry of Education of The People’s Republic of China.

The news editors obtained a quote from the research from Wuhan University: “It is unclear how the implementation of Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI) policy affects depression in non-disabled people and how this effect differs in different non-disabled groups. Using time-varying differences-in-differences method and nationally representative health survey data in wave 2011, wave 2013, wave 2015 and wave 2018 from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, we assessed the effect of LTCI policy on depression in non-disabled people aged 45 years and older, and discussed the heterogeneity of effect across different population characteristics: retirement, financial support and social participation status. We found LTCI policy statistically significant reduced depression by 0.76 units in non-disabled people compared to non-pilot cities. Depression in non-disabled people who unretired, with financial support and without social participation was reduced by 0.8267, 0.7079 and 1.2161 units, respectively.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Depression in non-disabled people was statistically significant reduced because of LTCI policy in China, and non-disabled people who unretired, with financial support and without social participation benefited more from LTCI policy. Our findings highlight the depression-reducing effect of LTCI policy in non-recipients and suggest that non-disabled people who unretired, with financial support and without social participation should be concerned during LTCI policy progress.”

For more information on this research see: Effect of long-term care insurance policy on depression in non-disabled people: evidence from China. BMC Public Health, 2024,24(1):1-12. (BMC Public Health - http://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com). The publisher for BMC Public Health is BMC.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-18375-3.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Wenjing Jiang, Center for Social Security Studies, Wuhan University. Additional authors for this research include Hongyan Yang.