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Contributed by William A. V. Clark, June 25, 2019 (sent for review February 20, 2019; reviewed by Ray Forrest and Donggen Wang)
Significance
We reevaluate the level of subjective well-being in China with data from the China Household Finance Study. The analysis shows that in contrast to the decline in well-being reported in earlier studies, all groups report increased quality of life in the second decade of the 21st century. The analysis shows that the gap across rural and urban respondents is narrowing. Probit models of the levels of well-being show that social capital, measured as the perceived feelings of safety and security, community participation, and whether society is perceived to be fair, influence reported well-being. Household income, assets, health, being married, and the quality of neighborhood infrastructure, measured by availability of parks, primary schools, and hospitals, contributes positively to subjective well-being.
Abstract
There is now recognition that a population’s overall level of well-being is defined not just by income and wealth. Where we live and who we interact with are likely to be equally important in our overall levels of satisfaction with our lives. This thinking has stimulated studies of subjective well-being, or happiness, at both national and local scales. These studies suggest that where you live does matter, although it is health and family status that have the most direct effects on well-being. In this study, we use a detailed dataset on well-being from the China Household Finance Survey to reexamine well-being across China, where profound socioeconomic changes are taking place. The study controls for self-reported health and examines subjective well-being across extensive and varied Chinese urban and rural environments. We find that the earlier pessimism about China’s well-being, which emphasized declining happiness, may be misplaced. We make two contributions: first, we show a rising level of subjective well-being, and second, we show that there is a narrowing gap in well-being across different social indicators. Methodologically, we bring in the perspectives of both social capital and geographic context.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: wclark{at}geog.ucla.edu or daichunyi{at}chfs.cn.
Author contributions: W.A.V.C., D.Y., and Y.H. designed research, performed research, analyzed data, and wrote the paper.
Reviewers: R.F., Lingnan University; and D.W., Hong Kong Baptist University.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1902926116/-/DCSupplemental.
Published under the PNAS license.
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Subjective well-being in China’s changing society
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