| Author Name | KAWATA Keisuke (Hiroshima University) /WANG Meixin (Qingdao University) /YIN Ting (Fellow, RIETI) |
|---|---|
| Creation Date/NO. | July 2015 15-E-095 |
| Research Project | A Socioeconomic Analysis of Households in Environments Characterized by Aging Population and Low Birth Rates |
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Abstract
This paper provides new empirical results to understand the impacts of the death of spouses on the surviving partner's health status. We use the survey data for elderly persons in the city of Qingdao in China, which include information for individual health status and other basic characteristics. Based on the probit estimation and the propensity-score approaches, we estimate the impacts of the death of spouses on health status. These estimation results consistently show the heterogeneous health effects between males and females; we can observe statistically significant negative effects on females' health status, while any statistically significant effects for males were unable to be found. One of the possible interpretations of these results is the unique policy in the Mao era (1949-1976).
