The 49th Xi Xian Forum, co-hosted by IIDPF and the School of Public Finance and Taxation, was successfully held on 28 December 2023 in Conference Room 119 of Wenqin Building. Professor Nie Peng from the School of Economics and Finance of Xi’an Jiaotong University, as the keynote speaker of the forum, gave a keynote speech entitled “Inequalities in Ex-post Opportunities for the Health of Our Older People - New Evidence from Three Equal Opportunity Frameworks”. The academic forum was hosted by Professor MA Yuanyuan from IIDPF of ZUEL, with the participation of Associate Professor YAN Weibo from the School of Public Finance and Taxation, and over 20 faculty members and students, including researchers Assistant Professor WAN Qian, Assistant Professor ZOU Jianwen from IIDPF.
China's rapid ageing and inequality among the elderly are becoming increasingly prominent. Using data from the China Health and Aged Care Tracking Survey (CHALRS) and the CHARLS Life Course Survey, Professor Nie Peng measured the relative contributions of health inequality and factors of environment, effort, and demographic characteristics of the elderly in Barry, Roemer, and Swift contexts, respectively, and explored their trends and causes. The results indicate that there is no statistically significant difference in the results of the measures across the three contexts. Overall inequalities in health among older adults improved over the 2011-2018 period, with inequalities in opportunities for self-assessed health declining, yet inequalities in opportunities for adaptive load trending upward. In addition, region of birth, health and nutritional status in childhood, and socioeconomic status of the family were the main factors contributing to inequality of opportunity for adaptive load and self-assessed health.
Professor Nie Peng gave a wonderful speech to the faculty members and students present and at the same time triggered their in-depth thinking. In the discussion session, the attending faculty and students actively interacted regarding the research background, theoretical models and empirical evidence.
Brief Bio
Professor Nie Peng holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Hohenheim, Germany. He is currently a professor at the School of Economics and Finance of Xi’an Jiaotong University and the Deputy Director of the Center for Aging Health and Geriatrics at the Global Health Institute (GHI). His primary research field is health economics. His major research has been published in economic journals including Energy Economics, China Economic Review, Review of Income and Wealth, etc., with collaborative research also appearing in journals including Nature, Nature Medicine, etc. He has chaired multiple international and national projects funded by the European Union, the World Bank, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Presently, he serves as a council member of the China Intergenerational Mobility Research Forum, a member of the Young Health Economists Committee of the China Health Economics Association and the Health Information Society of China's Big Data Committee for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management. He is the associate editor of The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, an editorial board member of BMC Geriatrics and BMC Public Health, and a peer reviewer for nearly a hundred international journals including PNAS, BMJ, Journal of Population Economics, etc.