Analysis on the Choice of the First Visiting Medical Treatment Behavior of the Elderly Immigrants in China

Kang Yin , Shandong University

This article uses the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey(CMDS) to construct an ordered logit model to analysis the choice of the first visiting medical treatment behavior of the elderly immigrants that contains rural-urban and urban-urban elderly immigrants in China. This model includes individual factors, economic factors, social factors and migration factors. The results of the study show that the selection structure of the first-time medical treatment behavior of the elderly immigrants is unreasonable. More than half of the elderly immigrants is initially selected to go to the pharmacy or ignore the condition. The rural-urban and urban-urban elder migrants’ choices are affected by age, self-rated health, income, employment status, living conditions, medical insurance participation, establishment of local health records, immigrants areas, first-time mobility, family flow and so on. Therefore, the government should further improve the basic medical and health security system, and accelerate the process of reforming the medical settlement system. Second, communities ought to comprehensively improve the quality of community public health services to supply basic public health knowledge to the elderly immigrants. Lastly, families should provide more help for the elder immigrants to seek medical care to reduce the health risks faced by the elderly immigrants.

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 Presented in Session P2. Poster Session Ageing, Health and Mortality