农村老年人健康状况与劳动力供给：基于CHARLS数据的实证分析

Rural Elderly Health Status and Labor Supply: Empirical Analysis Based on CHARLS Data

摘要: 在中国，由于几十年的“独生子女政策”和不断的农村–城市劳动力迁移，农村地区的真实人口老龄化速度比城市地区更快，农业生产中对劳动力的需求越来越依赖于老年人。本研究利用CHARLS数据，考察了健康状况对农村老年人劳动供给的影响。构建了一个潜在的健康存量指数(LHSI)来消除测量偏差，然后采用Heckman两阶段和Bourguignon Fournier-Gurand两阶段方法处理健康和劳动决策的同时因果关系和模型估计中的样本选择问题。研究结果显示，在总体水平上，农村老年人的劳动参与和工作时间随着健康状况的改善而显著增加。这种影响对男性的作用明显大于女性，并且随着年龄的增长而增强。在农业和非农业劳动供给的细分中，健康状况的改善与农村老年人的劳动力参与呈正相关，同时也使就业从农业部门向非农业部门转移，尤其是对男性而言。然而，就工作时间而言，这些关系在性别和年龄上均不显著且不变。

Abstract: In China, due to decades of “one-child policy” and continuous rural-urban labor migration, the real population aging in rural areas is faster than in urban areas, and the demand for labor in agricultural production is increasingly dependent on the elderly. Using CHARLS data, this study examines the impact of health status on the labor supply of rural elderly. We construct a latent health stock index (LHSI) to eliminate measurement bias, and then adopt Heckman two-stage and Bourguignon Fournier-Gurand two-stage methods to deal with the simultaneous causality of health and labor decisions and the sample selection problem in model estimation. The findings show that, at the overall level, the labor force participation and working hours of the rural el-derly increase significantly as their health status improves. This effect was significantly greater in men than in women and increased with age. Across the breakdown of farm and non-farm labor supply, improvements in health status are positively associated with labor force participation of rural older people, while also shifting employment from the farm to non-farm sector, especially for men. For hours worked, however, these relationships were insignificant and invariant across sex and age.