Preventive medical services and influencing factors for migrant elderly in China from the perspective of household registration differences: A cross-sectional study

Abstract

Preventive medical services are very important to migrant elderly’s health. This study takes Chinese migrant elderly as an example, aiming to analyze their preventive medical services, and further explore the differences and influencing factors of preventive medical services for rural–urban migrant elderly and urban–urban migrant elderly, so as to provide experience for optimizing the health-care policies for them. A total of 5842 migrant elderly aged 60 and above from China Migrants Dynamic Survey 2017 were selected. Information on preventive medical services was acquired by the self-report questionnaire. Contingency table analysis was employed to describe migrant elderly’s preventive medical services. Binary logit regression model and Fairlie decomposition method were employed to examine factors affecting preventive medical services for migrant elderly and their household registration differences. Preventive medical services for migrant elderly, which measured by the establishment of community residents’ health records, accounted for 32.64%. However, the proportion of rural–urban migrant elderly was 6.29% lower than that of urban–urban migrant elderly. Based on the analytical framework of Anderson model, the protective factors affecting preventive medical services for migrant elderly were gender, age, and local network among predisposing factors, social security participation and coverage of health education among enabling factors, and health professional assessment among need factors, while the risk factor was household income among enabling factors. Moreover, they explain the household registration differences in preventive medical services for migrant elderly at 52.46%, with the enabling factors (especially social security participation) contributing the most. Therefore, Preventive medical services for migrant elderly are not very good, and there are significant differences in household registration. Relevant government departments should implement urban-inclusive policies and improve the social support system of preventive medical services for migrant elderly, while providing focused care and assistance to rural–urban migrant elderly.