How Health Consumption Affects the Health Level of the Population: Analysis Based on the Chinese Family Panel Studies

Abstract

Health is an inevitable requirement for the promotion of overall human development and a basic condition for economic and social development. Each person is the first person responsible for his or her own health, and health has an important significance to the residents themselves. Data from the Chinese Family Panel Studies (CFPS) for 3 years—2014, 2016, and 2018—were selected to study the impact of active health consumption on residents’ health using a panel data fixed effects model. It was found that proactive health consumption can significantly improve the health of residents, and the main findings still hold through robustness tests including instrumental variables. The mechanism analysis shows that active health consumption can improve the health level of residents by increasing the frequency of exercise. Therefore, in the context of the “Health China” strategy, active health consumption should be promoted to cultivate the habit of physical exercise so as to continuously improve the health level of the residents.