Abstract:

This paper use China Health and Retirement Survey data to study the impact of biased health perception on self-health care utilization among Chinese middle-aged and elderly. We construct the individual level biased health perception variables as the difference between individuals' objective hypertension status and their subjective answer to the hypertension. We find that biased health perception significantly lowers the self-health care rate among middle-aged and elderly. We also found that biased health perception significantly reduced the likelihood of outpatient or hospitalization, indicating a non-substitute relationship between self-care and formal care. We suggest that strengthen special health education and construct national screening program as policy response to the high biased health perception rate among middle aged and elderly, which will counteract the negative health effect therein.

Key words:

health care utilization, health information, healthy aging