Time-to-Death and Health Care Expenditure: Evidence from China

Despite increasing research on the relationship between time to death (TTD) and health care expenditures, further investigation is necessary to verify this phenomenon in specific countries. As the world’s largest developing country, China is rapidly aging and the old population is huge.This study analyses the impact of TTD on the health care expenditures of elderly people in China using data from the 2011 and 2013 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey (CHARLS). We found that when people were near death, their health care expenditures increased insignificantly with age due to the relative concentration of total health care expenditures before death. When people were approaching death, their health care expenditures increased and then declined along with the increase in age. Thus, the Chinese government should take 15a cautious view of the relationship between population ageing and health care expenditures, although the rising proportion of the elderly population will result in an enormous medical expense burden for the whole society.