The evolutionary trends of health inequality among elderly Chinese people and influencing factors of these trends from 2005 to 2017

Reducing health inequality and ensuring national health equity have become issues of great concern to all countries in the world. This paper based on the ordered Probit model and concentrated index decomposition method, analysed the influencing factors and evolution trend of health inequality among the elderly with high age in China from 2005 to 2017. The study found that in 2005-2017, the self-rated health distribution of the elderly with high age in China showed an obvious inverted "U" shape, with the proportion of general and relatively healthy being the largest, while the proportion of unhealthy and very healthy was lower. Lifestyle, family income, and age were the main important factors to expand health inequality. Therefore, encouraging the elderly with high age to develop good living habits and narrowing the income gap of the elderly are conducive to solving the health inequality of the elderly with high age and achieving the goals of active ageing and healthy ageing.