Health Care Utilization at Retirement: Evidence from Urban China

Mixed evidence of the relationship between retirement and health care utilization was found in previous studies. We aim to explore the causal effect of retirement on health care utilization among urban workers with generous health insurance in China using fuzzy regression discontinuity design. Our results show that retirement significantly increase outpatient care utilization, but has no significant impact on the use of inpatient care. We give evidence that the increase of outpatient care utilization at retirement is attributed by the increase in number of outpatient visits. Ceteris paribus, retirement increases number of outpatient visits by 16.1 percent for females and 14.6 percent for males. The impact could be related to the lower patient cost sharing and reduced opportunity cost of time at retirement. Our findings contribute to better understanding the effect of retirement on health care utilization among population with generous health insurance in developing countries