Influencing Factors and Countermeasures of the Health of Residents in the City Clusters along the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River

This paper introduces several factors, namely, environmental pollution, medical level and environmental governance, into the Grossman's production function for health. Then, an empirical analysis was conducted based on the 2004-2016 panel data of the city clusters along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. Through the analysis, the author evaluated and compared how different factors affect the health of residents in the three city clusters: Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan (CZT) city cluster, Wuhan city cluster and circum-Poyang Lake (CPL) city cluster. The results show that: (1) In all three city clusters, economic growth can effectively improve the health of residents, and environmental pollution is also a key influencing factor of the health of residents. (2) Medical level has a close correlation with the health of residents. In the CZT city cluster, the medical level is positively correlated with the health of residents; in the CPL city cluster, the correlation is negative and takes the shape of an inverted U in the long run. (3) In all three city clusters, the environmental governance has an inverted U-shape correlation with the health of residents, indicating that environmental governance is not enough to promote the health of residents. Finally, several countermeasures were put forward to enhance the health of residents in the study area. The research findings shed new light on policymaking for the health of residents.