Personal Well-being in Urban China

Smyth, Russell; Nielsen, Ingrid; Zhai, Qingguo

doi:10.1007/s11205-009-9457-2

Cited by 123 publications

(88 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…However, earlier studies on China have been at times narrow in terms of study population, for instance, focusing on some specific groups such as the elderly and urban residents (Knight and Gunatilaka, 2010;Smyth, Nielsen and Zhai, 2010; 1 Wu and Li (2013) examine the subjective consequence of rising income inequality amidst rapid economic growth in China. Based on the data from a nationally representative survey conducted in 2005, they show that, while personal income improves life satisfaction, local level income inequality has a negative effect on individuals' life satisfaction, but they did not look into the impact for different income groups.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subjective well-being in China, 2005–2010: The role of relative income, gender, and location

Asadullah

Xiao

Yeoh

2018

China Economic Review

138

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I EIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. We use data from two rounds of the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) to study the determinants of subjective well-being in China over the period 2005-2010 during which selfreported happiness scores show an increase across all income groups. Ordered probit regression analysis of well-being reveals large influence of gender, rural residency and household income. After controlling for demographic attributes, health, unemployment status, household size, agricultural hukou (household registration identity) and education status, household assets, the influence of past and future income and province dummies, we find that women, urban residents and people with higher income are happier in China. More schooling, better health and being employed are positively and significantly correlated with well-being. Sub-sample s reveals that the rich only care about relative income whereas the effect of absolute income dominates in case of the poorer section. The influence of absolute income is larger among women compared to men and in turn explains why women, despite being poorer, are happier in China, conditional on socio-economic differences. On the other hand, rural residents are poorer than urban residents so that conditional on having the same income, there is no rural-urban happiness gap. Our results suggest that while further decline in poverty will enhance well-being in China, policies that reduce rural-urban and gender inequalities are also likely to boost well-being. JEL C...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Subjective well-being in China, 2005–2010: The role of relative income, gender, and location

Asadullah

Xiao

Yeoh

2018

China Economic Review

138

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“…While some studies have found individual characteristics (such as gender, age, and education) (24)(25)(26), social support (26,27), social belonging (28), economic openness (29), and atmospheric pollution (30) to be associated with SWB among urban Chinese people, research focusing specifically on the neighborhood environment and SWB among elders in China has been limited. In fact, we could only find one such study (27), and this study did not examine individual, physical, and social environmental characteristics simultaneously.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationships between neighborhood attributes and subjective well-being among the Chinese elderly: Data from Shanghai

Gao

Weaver

et al. 2017

BST

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“…The majority of these studies focus on urban residents (Appleton and Song 2008;Smyth et al 2010;Wang and VanderWeele 2011;Jiang et al 2012;Huang et al 2015;Qian and Qian 2015;Akee et al 2015). But there have also been a few studies that examine the determinants of happiness for rural residents (Knight et al 2009) and rural-urban migrants (Gao and Smyth 2011;Knight and Gunatilaka 2010b;Nielsen et al 2010;Akay et al 2012).…”

Section: The Traditional Focus In Economics Has Been To Use Indicatormentioning

confidence: 99%

Height, Weight and Well-Being for Rural, Urban and Migrant Workers in China

Lee

Zhao

2015

Soc Indic Res

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. In general, the happiness literature has paid little attention to the relationship between physical appearance and well-being. In this paper, we examine the link between weight, height and well-being for three distinct samples in China given that attractiveness effects likely vary greatly across sociocultural contexts. As China has recently undergone rapid economic transformation in the urban areas, this empirical exercise is particularly interesting because it can highlight how changing social norms have affected the relationship between physical appearance and subjective well-being. For the rural and migrant samples, we find that for both men and women, big and tall individuals have higher levels of well-being. This is consistent with the notion that the strong are better off when more labor intensive work is the norm. For the urban sample and for urban males in particular, no well-being penalty is found for being obese, unlike previous results based on Western samples. It is very likely that the unique Chinese cultural practice of network building banquets and feasting is behind this finding.JEL Classification: I10, I30

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Personal Well-being in Urban China

Abstract: China, Personal wellbeing index, Subjective wellbeing,

Cited by 123 publications

References 57 publications

Subjective well-being in China, 2005–2010: The role of relative income, gender, and location

Subjective well-being in China, 2005–2010: The role of relative income, gender, and location

Relationships between neighborhood attributes and subjective well-being among the Chinese elderly: Data from Shanghai

Height, Weight and Well-Being for Rural, Urban and Migrant Workers in China

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