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This paper uses the China Family Panel Studies to investigate the relationship between educational difference between partners and wife’s happiness. Employing some econometric models, this paper finds that the status of wife having more education than husband has a negative impact on wife’s happiness. To alleviate the endogeneity of educational difference, this paper uses an instrument variable approach to identify the causal relationship between them, and obtains conclusions consistent with the baseline regression. Heterogeneous analysis shows that for women who are less educated and subject to external traditional cultural norms, the negative happiness effect of wife having more education than husband is particularly significant. While greatly influenced by traditional cultural norms, these women are not only unwilling but also afraid to deviate from the role orientation of women in the existing social norms. Therefore, once women transcend the traditional norms to have more education than their husbands, their happiness will be reduced.

This paper engages with civic development in urban neighborhoods in China after the period of reform that began in 1978. Examining the collective civic petitions that have occurred in urban neighborhoods, the paper offers a comparative analysis of changing trends, internal mechanisms, and their spatial distribution between two different-tier cities. Data pertaining to the collective civic petitions was drawn from open archives in two municipal bureaus, and related to the years 2013 to 2015. The data was then split into three types of petition typology—claim, protest, and hybrid. Certain similarities and differences emerged from the analysis relating to the types of petition that have occurred against different petition counterparties, namely, state authorities, real developers, and property management companies. Similarities among the two cities could be capable of indicating advancing urban civic developments with internal mechanisms among petition typology and contexts of individual petitions. Differences among the two cities could be related to various differences in their urban contexts, and may also reflect different levels of citizen civic consciousness and behavior.