# Social Pension, Health, and Healthy Aging

> **NIH NIH K01** · YALE UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $128,542

## Abstract

Project Summary
Older adults often suffer from multiple health problems. Social pensions, i.e., income transfers paid regularly to
older people, are the key to alleviating old age poverty, reducing income insecurity, and investing in health.
The roll-out of social pension programs in 106 countries has raised income of an ever-increasing body of older
persons. However, existing evidence is inconclusive on if and to what extent social pensions may help to
improve the health and health trajectory of the elderly. There is mixed evidence on the impact of pension
income on mortality, subjective measures of health and physical health. Evaluating multidimensional health
conditions and identifying pathways through which pension benefits affect health and domains of healthy aging
may inform how and when to intervene to achieve desirable health objectives.
Utilizing rich information on self-reported health, coexisting diseases, and blood/non-blood biomarkers in a
HRS-sister survey sponsored by the NIH/NIA, i.e., China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS),
we study the New Social Pension Scheme (NSPS), the newest and largest social pension program in the world
that will soon cover 1 billion individuals. We examine how health and health trajectory of seniors respond to
pension benefits (Aim 1), through what mechanisms or pathways (e.g. nutrition, financial strain, health services
utilization, health behavior, lifestyle, and labor supply) (Aim 2), and how multiple (e.g. family demographic,
social environmental) factors mediate the relationship between pension and health domains (Aim 3).
We analyze the recent implementation and expansion of the largest pension program in the world that will
enroll 1 billion population, i.e., China's New Social Pension Scheme (NSPS), which is similar to the U.S. Social
Security benefits in many aspects. Implementing cutting-edge and rigorous quasi-experimental research
designs to examine the causal impact of social pensions on health using a nationally representative sample of
biomarkers, we validate reporting bias of self-rated health and medical history, pay more adequate attention to
morbidity than just focusing on mortality, and identify early signals of pre-disease pathways that are below the
individual's threshold of perception. The rich meanings of biomarkers allow us to clarify the ambiguity in the
literature by disentangling the multiple underlying pathways and mechanisms of the impact of pension on
health. We are also able to explore mediating factors in the relationship between pension and health.
We advance studies of social pensions and health via innovatively integrating economic methods and
biomarker epidemiology into our research design to isolate the causal impact of pensions from confounding
factors to offer novel evidence to the question – how social security income may affect health and its trajectory.
We also aim to offer insights into income support programs and health of the elderly, which hol...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9822944
- **Project number:** 5K01AG053408-03
- **Recipient organization:** YALE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Xi Chen
- **Activity code:** K01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $128,542
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-12-01 → 2021-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9822944

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9822944, Social Pension, Health, and Healthy Aging (5K01AG053408-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9822944. Licensed CC0.

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