The association between Urban and Rural Resident Basic Medical Insurance and depressive symptoms among Chinese middle‐aged and older adults: Evidence from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study

Abstract It is unclear that whether Urban and Rural Resident Basic Medical Insurance (URRBMI) is associated with depressive symptoms among middle‐aged and older adults. To fulfill this research gap, this study aimed to investigate the association between URRBMI and depressive symptoms among the middle‐aged and older adults in China. This data of this study was sourced from the 2018 wave of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models were used to explore the association between URRBMI and depressive symptoms. Instrumental variable (IV) method was employed to address potential endogeneity problem which is caused by reverse causation and omitted variable bias. Propensity score matching (PSM) and doubly robust estimation were employed to conduct robustness checks. We provide robust evidence indicating that participation of URRBMI was significantly correlated with a reduced depression score. Moreover, we find that improving the utilization of inpatient and outpatient care may be important channels through which URRBMI relieved depressive symptoms.