The Relation of Socioeconomic Status and Functional Health of Chinese Elderly People: Physic Exercises and Health Insurance as Mediator

Socioeconomic status is one of the fundamental causes which have effects on health,and the theories which pay attention to the behavioral or environmental factors supply different perspectives.Based on the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey Data(2014),this paper uses Logit regression models and KHB method to analyze the relation and mechanism how socioeconomic status affect functional health of Chinese elderly people through the mediating variables of physical exercises of individual behavioral aspect and health insurances of institutional environmental factor.This research finds that the different dimension of SES has different direction on the physical health of the elderly,education level and self-rated economic status have a significant positive impact,but only the significant difference in functional health between the rich and the poor elderly people is in part caused through physical exercises.As suppression,physical exercises and health insurance partly cancel the effects which vocation and residence contribute to the elderly's functional health difference,and physical exercises has greater influence than payer of medical expense.This paper shows both behavioral and environmental theoretical perspectives are explanatory to the mechanism of socioeconomic status on the elderly's functional health,but the individual factor of physical exercises is a more powerful mediator than the institutional element of health insurance.