The effects of political capital on medical insurance in China - A study with controlling effects of human capital and cultural capital

Abstract: China's medical insurance has experienced series of reforms since 1978. During the market transition, the system confronted various challenges and improvements. A three-pillar basic medical insurance was formed for both rural and urban residents. At the same time, commercial medical insurance was developing and tended to play an increasingly critical role in medical welfare. Previous study found despite the market transition, political capital of an organization has significant effects on employees' social welfare obtaining. In order to investigate the current development of medical insurance and whether individual's political capital has effects on basic and commercial medical insurance coverage, this research employed China General Social Survey 2013 as the data resource. Among the entire respondents, 8381 valid observations were found for basic medical insurance and 8059 observations for commercial medical insurance. The result indicated that being a party member can increase probability of being covered by both basic and commercial medical insurance.