Summary Statistics on Air Pollution and Catastrophic Health Expenditure in China

China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study data from 24,004 participants aged 45 and above, matched with PM2.5 and meteorological data. The dataset, created by Huan He and last updated in April 2026, contains summary statistics analyzing the relationship between air pollution exposure and catastrophic health expenditure.

Use Cases

• Modeling the relationship between PM2.5 exposure and catastrophic health expenditure likelihood based on the described study design.
• Analyzing subgroup heterogeneity in financial risk based on described factors like urban/rural residence, age, and education.
• Investigating the mitigating effect of social health insurance types on pollution-related health costs as described in the results.

Strengths

• Data is derived from a large longitudinal study with 24,004 participants.
• Analysis integrates health survey data with external PM2.5 and meteorological data.
• Dataset is openly licensed under CC-BY-4.0.

Limitations

• Row count and column-level documentation are unknown; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset is very small (9.5 KB), suggesting it contains summary statistics rather than the raw underlying data.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Huan He.

Collection Method

Summary statistics generated from analysis of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study matched with air pollution data.

Time Range

Based on four waves of the CHARLS study; specific years are not provided.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-21 17:48:38; freshness should be verified.

Geography

China, focusing on middle-aged and older adults.