The impact of Chinese urban-rural integrated medical insurance policy on social trust from rural residents

The aim of the urban-rural integrated medical insurance policy implemented by the Chinese government is to narrow or even eliminate the gap between rural residents and urban residents in basic medical security, and finally to promote people’s perception of social fairness. Based on the data available in the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS) data set and the Difference-in-Difference (DID) model, the authors’ results show that the urban-rural integrated medical insurance policy significantly improves the level of social trust for Chinese rural residents. The authors also use social fairness as the mediating variable to evaluate the impact of the urban-rural integrated medical insurance policy on social trust from rural residents in China and the results confirm the mediating effect relationship. Moreover, the impact of the urban-rural integrated medical insurance policy on social trust is heterogeneous with respect to people’s different self-rated health levels and different ages. More specifically, for the group with lower self-rated health level and older age, the positive impact of urban-rural integrated medical insurance policy on social trust is more prominent. The findings indicate the potential long-term economic effects of the urban-rural integrated medical insurance policy from the perspective of social capital and also provide empirical reference for the further improvement of China’s basic medical insurance system.