Assessing the Effects of the New Cooperative Medical Scheme on Alleviating the Health Payment-Induced Poverty in Shaanxi Province, China

Copyright: © 2016 Yang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Background Disease has become one of the key causes of falling into poverty in rural China. The poor households are even more likely to suffer. The New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) has been implemented to provide rural residents financial protection against health risks. This study aims to assess the effect of the NCMS on alleviating health payment-induced poverty in the Shaanxi Province of China. Methods The data was drawn from the 5th National Health Service Survey of Shaanxi Province, conducted in 2013. In total, 41,037 individuals covered by NCMS were selected. Poverty headcount ratio (HCR), poverty gap and mean positive poverty gap were used for measuring the incidence, depth and intensity of poverty, respectively. The differences on poverty measures pre- and post- insurance reimbursement indicate the effectiveness of alleviating health payment-induced poverty under NCMS. Results For the general insured, 5.81% of households fell below the national poverty line owing to the health payment; this HCR dropped to 4.84% after insurance reimbursement. The poverty HCRs for the insured that had hospitalization in the past year dropped from 7.50% to 2.09% after reimbursement. With the NCMS compensation, the poverty gap declined from 42.90 Yuan to 34.49 Yuan (19.60% decreased) for the general insured and from 57.48 Yuan to 10.01 Yuan (82.59% decreased) for the hospital admission insured. The mean positive poverty gap declined 3.56% and 37.40% for two samples, respectively. Conclusion The NCMS could alleviate the health payment-induced poverty. The effectiveness of alleviating health payment-induced poverty is greater for hospital admission insured than for general insured, mainly because NCMS compensates for serious diseases. Our study suggests that a more comprehensive insurance benefit package design could further improve the effectiveness of poverty alleviation

Explaining Income-Related Inequalities in Dietary Knowledge: Evidence from the China Health and Nutrition Survey

Lack of adequate dietary knowledge may result in poor health conditions. This study aims to measure income-related inequality in dietary knowledge, and to explain the sources of the inequality. Data were from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) conducted in 2015. A summary of the dietary knowledge score and dietary guideline awareness was used to measure the dietary knowledge of respondents. The concentration index was employed as a measure of socioeconomic inequality and was decomposed into its determining factors. The study found that the proportion of respondents who correctly answered questions on dietary knowledge was significantly low for some questions. Compared to rural residents, urban residents had a higher proportion of correctly answered dietary knowledge questions. In addition, there are pro-rich inequalities in dietary knowledge. This observed inequality is determined not only by individual factors but also high-level area factors. Our study recommends that future dietary education programs could take different strategies for individuals with different educational levels and focus more on disadvantaged people. It would be beneficial to consider local dietary habits in developing education materials

Complexity measures and uncertainty relations of the high-dimensional harmonic and hydrogenic systems

In this work we find that not only the Heisenberg-like uncertainty products and the R\'enyi-entropy-based uncertainty sum have the same first-order values for all the quantum states of the $D$-dimensional hydrogenic and oscillator-like systems, respectively, in the pseudoclassical ($D \to \infty$) limit but a similar phenomenon also happens for both the Fisher-information-based uncertainty product and the Shannon-entropy-based uncertainty sum, as well as for the Cr\'amer-Rao and Fisher-Shannon complexities. Moreover, we show that the LMC (L\'opez-Ruiz-Mancini-Calvet) and LMC-R\'enyi complexity measures capture the hydrogenic-harmonic difference in the high dimensional limit already at first order

Towards Language-guided Visual Recognition via Dynamic Convolutions

In this paper, we are committed to establishing an unified and end-to-end multi-modal network via exploring the language-guided visual recognition. To approach this target, we first propose a novel multi-modal convolution module called Language-dependent Convolution (LaConv). Its convolution kernels are dynamically generated based on natural language information, which can help extract differentiated visual features for different multi-modal examples. Based on the LaConv module, we further build the first fully language-driven convolution network, termed as LaConvNet, which can unify the visual recognition and multi-modal reasoning in one forward structure. To validate LaConv and LaConvNet, we conduct extensive experiments on four benchmark datasets of two vision-and-language tasks, i.e., visual question answering (VQA) and referring expression comprehension (REC). The experimental results not only shows the performance gains of LaConv compared to the existing multi-modal modules, but also witness the merits of LaConvNet as an unified network, including compact network, high generalization ability and excellent performance, e.g., +4.7% on RefCOCO+

Testing and Analysis of Concrete-Filled Square Hollow Section Stub Columns with Perfobond Leister Rib

Perfobond Leister Rib (PBR) is found to improve the bond strength in concrete-filled hollow section and the capacity of the steel plate to resist local buckling. An experimental investigation of 12 test specimens is firstly carried out on the behavior of concrete-filled square hollow section CFSHS) stub columns with PBR. To examine different mechanical behaviors of the columns utilized in bridge or building structure, different loading methods are investigated; e.g., loading through steel alone, loading through concrete alone and loading through the whole cross section. The failure mode, strain distribution, ultimate strength and the confinement of the concrete core offered by the steel tube are studied. The test results showed that CFSHS tubular columns with PBR are emulative of the conventional columns. PBR can make the steel tube and filled-in concrete work together, which results in the axial load shared by hollow steel section and filled-in concrete section regardless of loading through steel or concrete alone. The axial strain distribution model of steel tube section along the height for CFSHS with PBR is proposed

Financial transfers from adult children and depressive symptoms among mid-aged and elderly residents in China - evidence from the China health and retirement longitudinal study.

Although the awareness of mental health problems in late life is rising, the association between financial transfers to the older generations from children and mental health at older ages in China has received little attention. This study examines the association between financial transfers from children and depressive symptoms among the mid-aged and elderly residents (from 45 years of age and older) in China. We used the data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS, 2013) (n = 10,935) This included data on financial transfers from all non-co-resident children to their parents, and the individual scores on depressive symptoms as measured by the 10-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale (CESD-10). A two-level - individual and community levels - mixed linear model was deployed to explore their association. Financial transfers from children to parents was the major component of inter-generational financial transfers in Chinese families. A higher financial support from non-co-resident children was signivicantly and positively related to fewer depressive symptoms (coef. = - 0.195,P-value< 0.001) among both the mid-aged and elderly parents. Financial transfers from non-co-resident children are associated with depressive symptoms among mid-aged and elderly residents in the China situation. Taxation and other policy measures should encourage and facilitate these type of financial transfers and prevent a decrease of support from children to parents