To understand the impact of digital literacy on the health behavior of rural older adults in China, and to provide policy basis and intervention measures for improving their health behavior. This study utilizes data from 1207 rural older adults aged 60 and above in the 2020 China Rural Revitalization Survey (CRRS), employing the Ordered Probit model and instrumental variable analysis to assesses the impact of digital literacy on the health behavior of rural older adults in China. Furthermore, the study examines the mediating effects of happiness and future expectations and analyses the differences in the impact of digital literacy across dimensions such as age, gender, and physical health status. (1) Digital literacy can improve the health behavior of rural older adults, including promoting their learning of health knowledge, engaging in fitness or exercise activities, consciously controlling salt, sugar and edible oil usage. The results are robust to various tests. (2) Mediation analysis reveals that sense of happiness and future expectations are the primary pathways through which digital literacy influences the health behavior of rural older adults. (3) Heterogeneity analysis further shows that age, gender, and BMI differences have varying impacts on the health behavior. This study provides crucial policy implications for promoting healthy aging and digital inclusion in rural China, including investing in rural digital infrastructure, implementing digital literacy training programs, and guiding rural older adults to effectively apply digital platforms for health-related purposes.

Background: Unhealthy behavior is an important factor threatening the health of older rural residents in China. We examine the effects of receiving pension on elderly rural residents’ health behavior (namely conscious control of sugar, salt, and edible oil intake, as well as learning health or wellness knowledge), also including effect heterogeneity by income level and gender. Methods: Using China Rural Revitalization Survey (CRRS) in 2020, we used the policy rule of the China’s New Rural Pension Scheme that only those people who are over 60 years old can have access to pension as the natural experiment, and explore the causal effect of receiving pensions on the health behaviors by using regression discontinuity design method. Results: Having access to pension can improve the health behavior of rural elderly residents, including increasing the probability of rural residents’ conscious control of sugar (p < 0.1) and conscious control of salt intake (p < 0.1), which is still valid after a series of robustness tests. Heterogeneity analysis finds that access to pensions is more likely to improve the health behavior of low-income families and male rural elderly residents. Conclusions: The research has expanded the discussion on the correlation between the pension and the health of rural elderly residents, and the conclusion provides important policy implications for optimizing the rural elderly insurance system and leveraging pension to improve the health behavior of rural elderly residents.

The key to promoting urbanization in China is to achieve urban integration of migrant peasant workers, and basic public health services may have a potential social impact on the subjective welfare of migrant peasant workers. In this paper, we use data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) to study the impact of basic public health services on the urban integration of migrant peasant workers. The results show that basic public health services can significantly improve the probability of migrant peasant workers’ urban integration. The conclusions remain robust after mitigating potential endogeneity issues using the propensity score matching method (PSM), the CMP method, and robustness testing by replacing the explanatory variables with the reduced tail treatment. Further research found that the impact of basic public health services on migrant peasant workers’ urban integration is heterogeneous. The urban integration effect of basic public health services is more significant in male, high school and above, migrant peasant workers’ groups. The urban integration effect of basic public health services gradually increases with upgrading of the urban grade at the second-tier city and higher urban levels, and it also plays a vital role in the urban integration of the migrant peasant workers at the third-tier city and lower urban levels. Our findings also provide an evidence-based policy for China to promote equalizing basic public health services and a path to the urbanization of migrant peasant workers.