Medical Expenditure Attributable to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in China and Gender Differences: A Case Study on National Representative Data with Multivariate Linear and Logistic Regression

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a prevalent disease in China, especially among the elderly; and cost of medical treatment is known to be quite burdensome. This study aims to approximates the economic costs, by gender, attributable to COPD among elderly Chinese. Employ four multivariate linear and logistic regression models, methods to anticipate results based on relationship between different variants, on the data from China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), a nationwide survey began in 2011, to approximate the medical expenditure of outpatients and inpatients attributable to COPD among the study population. The result shows that medical expenditure has a positive correlation with COPD diagnosis irrespective of gender. Nevertheless, there is a significant difference in expenditure between the two genders. Government needs to focus on early diagnosis, promoting smoke-free lifestyles, popularizing public and private health insurance, while keeping in mind that males and females require different treatment due to physiological differences.