Effects of Changes in Rural Household Income on Health care expenditure in China

Abstract

Demands for health care services are increasing day by day with the significant improvement in living standards for rural residents. To disclose influences of changes in rural household income on health care expenditure in China, the correlations between different income factors in China’s rural household and health care expenditure were analyzed and predicted by grey correlation and the model DGM (1, 1). Results show that the annual per capita disposable income and health care expenditure of rural household in China both have achieved an exponential growth trend year by year recently, but the growth of health care expenditure is higher than that of disposable income. The correlations between factors in the income structure and health care expenditure vary in different stages. In general, net property income and net transfer income show the closer correlations with health care expenditure than other income factors. In the next five years, health care expenditure is expected to increase year by year as a response to the increasing annual per capita disposable income of rural household in China.