Objective/Meaning Under the dual background of accelerating the population aging and increasing the pension pressure, this paper empirically analyzed the impact of medical insurance on the re-employment of younger elderly people, in order to provide reference for alleviating the labor shortage and releasing the demographic dividend of the elderly.

Methods/Procedures Based on the data of China Health and Pension Follow-up Survey (CHARLS) in 2020, the binary Logit model and intermediary effect model were used to investigate the influence of medical insurance on the re-employment of younger elderly people.

Results/Conclusions  The study found that: (1) The medical insurance could significantly promote the re-employment of younger elderly people. (2) The medical insurance promoted the re-employment of the younger elderly by improving their health level. (3) There were differences in gender, household registration and marital status in the impact of medical insurance on the re-employment of younger elderly people, and it had a stronger role in promoting the re-employment of female younger elderly people, rural younger elderly people and married younger elderly people. Based on this, the countermeasures were put forward including constructing an incentive mechanism for medical insurance participation to improve the coverage rate of medical insurance, strengthening the two-way linkage between health insurance and employment support to release the promotion efficiency of medical insurance, and implementing the differentiated employment support policies to pay attention to the heterogeneous needs of groups.