Teacher Shi Xuezhu's paper was accepted for publication by Labor Economics

The academic paper written by Professor Shi Xuezhu, The health wealth nexus for the elite: Evidence from the boosting housing market in China, was accepted for publication in September 2022 by the official journal Labor Economics of the European Association of Labor Economists.

Abstract of the paper

A large body of literature has investigated the health-wealth nexus. Most studies exploit exogenous shocks to wealth, such as lottery prizes and inheritances, to investigate the causal effects of wealth on health, especially in developed countries. This paper draws on data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) to first examine the impacts of wealth on the health of the elderly in China. Following the method of Lovenheim and Mumford (2013), I use growth in household housing wealth driven by prefecture-level housing market as an exogenous variation in household-level wealth in China. The findings indicate that wealth has causal effects on individual health-related outcomes. Surprisingly, the growth in housing wealth imposes mixed effects on health conditions and, in fact, reduces healthy activities and healthcare utilisation. As their housing wealth increases, people with lower education levels generally suffer worse physical health and engage in fewer healthy behaviours than those with higher education levels, making health literacy a possible explanation for the mixed health-wealth nexus for the elderly in China.

Author Introduction

Shi Xuezhu, Assistant Professor of Labor Economics and Social Security at the University of International Business and Economics.