Family life and Chinese adults’ happiness across the life span

Abstract

An individual's happiness is closely related to their family life as the family is the institution in which they spend most of their life. Capitalizing on data from the 2018 China Family Panel Studies, this study investigates the relationship between family economic standing (measured by household income and homeownership) and family processes (measured by marital status and childlessness), as well as children's characteristics (measured by gender composition of children and adult children's educational attainment and marital status), and happiness of Chinese adults. We take a life-course perspective and examine how such relationships vary across different life stages. We find that factors like household income and homeownership are positively related to happiness for people in general; that married adults are happier than those who are unmarried; childlessness results in decreased individual happiness in old age; adult children's educational attainment, measured by college degree (three-year and four-year) and above, improves parents’ happiness; while children's unmarried status makes parents less happy. These significant relationships also change across the life span.

Development and initial validation of the contemporary Chinese Familism Scale.

“…The overall level of familism was positively associated with family adaption and gratitude and negatively associated with family conflict and avoidance, suggesting that high endorsement of familism may create a warm and harmonious family environment. The level of familism was also positively associated with self-report life satisfaction, consistent with the recent findings that a strong belief in family centrality is closely related to happiness and life satisfaction (e.g., Sun et al, 2019;Xu & Liu, 2021). Our finding of the negative association between familism and self-report anxiety and loneliness adds to the existing literature that familism has implications for not only optimal aspects of psychological functioning but also mental health problems.…”

The predominance of investment in girls’ after-school education in China and the logic of family preferences

“…Other related research also shows that in Shanghai, Wuhan, Xi'an, and other big cities at the end of the 20th century, married daughters, especially those who lived with their parents, provided more financial support than married sons (Xie and Zhu, 2009). Another study, based on nationally representative survey data, found that daughters in urban families outperform sons in terms of economic support and care giving (Xu, 2015). In other words, a gender preference shift is taking place in different ways and at different speeds between urban and rural areas in China.…”