Can commercial health insurance improve family happiness?

This paper evaluates the happiness benefits of commercial health insurance in China’s multi-level medical security system using a treatment effect model, and explores the ways in which commercial health insurance affects family happiness and the heterogeneity of its effects on different levels of happiness. I found that the current development of commercial health insurance has a significant promotion effect on the level of family happiness, and this promotion effect is partly transmitted by improving family health status and increasing household non-medical health care consumption expenditure. However, the happiness benefits and transmission mechanisms of commercial health insurance have obvious heterogeneity characteristics for families with different levels of happiness, and the positive impact on “happier” families is more prominent. The “Matthew effect” indicates that there are certain unfair problems in commercial health insurance at present. To alleviate this unfair problem, the government and the insurance industry should try to introduce commercial health insurance that benefits more people and fully cater for the needs of different classes of people. The research conclusions of this paper are also applicable to other countries where the development of commercial health insurance is in its infancy.