封婷：The health status of China’s elderly and their demand for healthcare services

    Abstract： This paper, based on data from the 2018 wave of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS),reports on the health status of China’s elderly, and their needs for care and use of medical services. The proportion of the elderly in 2018 who reported being satisfied with their current lives was 67.1%, a proportion significantly higher than that reported by CLHLS 2002. Some 73.1% of the elderly self-rated their health as good or fair. There were ten types of chronic diseases with prevalence rates higher than 5%, among which hypertension was the most common,with 46.2% of survey respondents self-reporting suffering from it. The daily lives of some people suffering from chronic diseases were seriously affected.Most elderly people (93.2%) were able to complete without assistance all of the ADL items surveyed by CLHLS 2018, while 63.6% were able to do so with IADL items. Only 19.1% of the elderly reported that they were unable to perform at least one IADL item. Family members were still the main source of primary care.The satisfaction of the elderly with primary caregiver and helps they received was quite high. The data shows that the average weekly cost of care was RMB651.1 yuan, with a median of RMB 180.0 yuan. The median hours children or grand children helped their elderly parents (grandparents) in the week prior to being interviewed was 0, and the mean value was 10.3 h.Because 86.5% of elderly survey respondents were covered by some type of medical insurance, more than half of the elderly had their medical expenses covered by insurance, and most elderly people had access to adequate medical services.
    Keywords：  Self-reported health ·Prevalence rates of chronic diseases ·ADL/IADL ·Demand for care ·Medical services
    Website：  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42379-020-00052-8