DISTRIBUTION OF MEDICAL INSURANCE IN CHINA

This paper investigates factors related to the distribution of medical insurance coverage in China, using information from an eight-province household survey of almost 16,000 individuals, conducted in 1989. Res ults of bivariate analyses show that medical insurance coverage, defin ed very broadly, varies considerably by individual and regional charac teristics. Age, gender, education, occupation, employment sector, urba nization, level of industrial and commercial development, and province are all related to being insured or not. In addition, we find that th e type of insurance program available to people varies by these same f actors, and that the benefits provided by the seemingly uniform public and worker programs also vary, especially by province and degree of u rban development. When the individual and regional variables are consi dered together in logistic regression analyses, the factors most stron gly statistically related to the likelihood of being insured are where one works and where one lives. The distribution of insurance benefits in China appears to result in a pattern in which the rural and the po or, who are often at great risk of illness, are less likely to have me dical insurance.