Study on population aging, birth policy and long-term care insurance participation

Abstract

With the deepening of the aging of Chinese society, the participation rate of long-term care insurance for the elderly is rising rapidly. However, at the same time, the implementation of China’s multi-child policy has increased the burden of families. In order to realize the balance between providing for the elderly and raising multiple children, how would different families make their decisions on purchasing long-term care insurance? Based on the data of CHARLS 2018, this paper applied Logistic regression method to empirically test the impact of population aging and the number of children on the participation of families in long-term care insurance for the elderly. The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between the age of the elderly in the family and long-term care insurance participation. With the increase of age of the elderly, families were found to be more likely to buy long-term care insurance, and this effect remained consistent in urban and rural areas. However, the number of children inhibited the purchase of long-term care insurance. The more children a family had, the more likely it would be to reduce the purchase of long-term care insurance for the elderly. This relationship was significant in urban areas, but not in rural areas. Therefore, when China implements the multi-child policy, it is necessary to pay attention to the crowding-out effect of elderly care security.