Health vulnerability and health poverty of rice farmers: evidence from Hubei province in China
China Agricultural Economic Review
ISSN: 1756-137X
Article publication date: 13 February 2023
Issue publication date: 2 May 2023
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study was threefold: (1) to measure farmers' health poverty, (2) to examine the effect of health vulnerability on health poverty and (3) to identify countermeasures that may alleviate health poverty in rural China.
Design/methodology/approach
This study built a health poverty measurement model based on the multi-dimensional poverty framework to evaluate farmers' health vulnerability. Further, this paper used an econometric model to assess the impact of health vulnerability on health poverty. The sample for this study comprised 1,115 rice farmers from Hubei province, China.
Findings
The medical affordability poverty ratio was 17.95%, where farmers in the low-income group faced severe medical affordability poverty (27.46%). Results from the multi-dimensional analysis showed that, the health poverty ratios were 17.95 and 30.50%, respectively. Our results indicated that climate change vulnerabilities, living habits, medical facilities and medical accessibility were positively related to health poverty, whereas the regular physical examinations reduced mental health poverty.
Research limitations/implications
Based on this study's findings, we proposed that: (1) to address illness-induced poverty among members of the agricultural community, national and provincial strategies and programs grounded on a multi-dimensional health poverty framework ought to be formulated and implemented, (2) mechanisms of health knowledge exchange may facilitate the improvement of farmers' health status, (3) robust and comprehensive metrics should be employed to understand and improve farmers' ability to absorb and mitigate the negative health impacts and (4) the improvement in both quality and quantity for medical facilities and medical affordability in the rural areas should be key priorities in governmental-wide initiatives.
Originality/value
Existing studies for alleviating poverty caused by disease mainly focus on medical service support to those economic vulnerabilities after a disease happens. However, few studies have focused on the root causes of poverty caused by disease, particularly from the preventive perspective of health vulnerability. To fill this gap, this study, therefore, proposes the health poverty index and analyzes the impact of health vulnerability on health poverty.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Natural Sciences Foundation of China (72003075; 42071157), the Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation, Ministry of Education of China (20YJC630065) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2019M652672; 2019T120736; 2020T130231). The authors also thank all the contributions from the students, farmers and local leaders who participated in data collection.
Declaration of Interest Statement: There is no conflict of interests.
Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest: The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and publication of this article. No financial disclosures were reported by the authors of this paper.
Compliance with Ethnical Standards: Ethical approval: All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Citation
Li, W., Zhang, L., Yue, M., Ruiz-Menjivar, J. and Zhang, J. (2023), "Health vulnerability and health poverty of rice farmers: evidence from Hubei province in China", China Agricultural Economic Review, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 259-277. https://doi.org/10.1108/CAER-03-2021-0062
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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