From Pollution Control to Burden Reduction: How Environmental Regulation Affects Medical Expenditure of Middle-aged and Elderly Households

GULIBADAN Tuohan; WU Jing; LI Qing

Volume 42 Issue 3

May 2026

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Article Navigation > Journal of Guangdong University of Finance & Economics > 2026 > 41(3): 79-90

GULIBADAN Tuohan, WU Jing, LI Qing. From Pollution Control to Burden Reduction: How Environmental Regulation Affects Medical Expenditure of Middle-aged and Elderly Households[J]. Journal of Guangdong University of Finance & Economics, 2026, 41(3): 79-90.

Citation:

GULIBADAN Tuohan, WU Jing, LI Qing. From Pollution Control to Burden Reduction: How Environmental Regulation Affects Medical Expenditure of Middle-aged and Elderly Households[J]. Journal of Guangdong University of Finance & Economics, 2026, 41(3): 79-90.

Citation:

GULIBADAN Tuohan, WU Jing, LI Qing. From Pollution Control to Burden Reduction: How Environmental Regulation Affects Medical Expenditure of Middle-aged and Elderly Households[J]. Journal of Guangdong University of Finance & Economics, 2026, 41(3): 79-90.

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From Pollution Control to Burden Reduction: How Environmental Regulation Affects Medical Expenditure of Middle-aged and Elderly Households

School of Economics and Management, Xinjiang University, Urumqi 830046, China

Received Date: 2025-09-18
Available Online: 2026-06-26
Publish Date: 2026-05-28

Abstract

Abstract

Against the strategic backdrop of the coordinated advancement of the Beautiful China Initiative and Healthy China Initiative, exploring the impact of environmental regulation on household medical expenditure is of great theoretical and practical significance. Based on China's prefecture-level city data from 2013 to 2020 and micro data from four waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), this paper empirically examines the impact of environmental regulation on medical expenditure of middle-aged and elderly households. The results show that environmental regulation significantly reduces medical expenditure of middle-aged and elderly households. This core conclusion still holds after endogeneity treatment and a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis reveals that environmental regulation curbs medical expenditure of middle-aged and elderly households through three pathways: environmental governance, health cognition improvement, and health improvement. Heterogeneity analysis shows that, at the household level, environmental regulation has a stronger inhibitory effect on medical expenditure of middle-aged and low-income households. At the regional level, households in resource-based cities and non-key environmental protection cities exhibit greater sensitivity to environmental regulation in terms of health spending. From the micro household perspective, this study expands the research scope of environmental regulation's influence on health expenditure, and provides empirical evidence for coordinating ecological civilization construction and national health development.
- environmental regulation,
- household medical expenditure,
- environmental governance,
- health cognition improvement,
- health improvement

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References(43)

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