China’s life satisfaction, 1990–2010
Contributed by Richard A. Easterlin, April 6, 2012 (sent for review February 17, 2012)
Commentary
June 1, 2012
Abstract
Despite its unprecedented growth in output per capita in the last two decades, China has essentially followed the life satisfaction trajectory of the central and eastern European transition countries—a U-shaped swing and a nil or declining trend. There is no evidence of an increase in life satisfaction of the magnitude that might have been expected to result from the fourfold improvement in the level of per capita consumption that has occurred. As in the European countries, in China the trend and U-shaped pattern appear to be related to a pronounced rise in unemployment followed by a mild decline, and an accompanying dissolution of the social safety net along with growing income inequality. The burden of worsening life satisfaction in China has fallen chiefly on the lowest socioeconomic groups. An initially highly egalitarian distribution of life satisfaction has been replaced by an increasingly unequal one, with decreasing life satisfaction in persons in the bottom third of the income distribution and increasing life satisfaction in those in the top third.
Acknowledgments
We thank Cheng Hsiao, John Knight, Jeffrey Nugent, Andrew J. Oswald, Anke Plagnol, and John Strauss for their help. Special thanks go to Zhang Hui of Horizon Research Consultancy Group for her assistance with the Horizon survey data. We have benefited from presentations at the Rand Corporation, University of Paris, and the University of Southern California. The University of Southern California provided financial assistance for data acquisition and analysis.
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Published online: May 14, 2012
Published in issue: June 19, 2012
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Acknowledgments
We thank Cheng Hsiao, John Knight, Jeffrey Nugent, Andrew J. Oswald, Anke Plagnol, and John Strauss for their help. Special thanks go to Zhang Hui of Horizon Research Consultancy Group for her assistance with the Horizon survey data. We have benefited from presentations at the Rand Corporation, University of Paris, and the University of Southern California. The University of Southern California provided financial assistance for data acquisition and analysis.
Notes
*Output statistics reported in this paper are from the Penn World Table (pwt.econ.upenn.edu/cic_main.html).
†
From the Pew Research Center’s 2011 Global Attitudes Project (http://www.pewglobal.org/category/datasets/).
‡
The following surveys were used: the World Values Survey (www.worldvaluessurvey.org), the Asiabarometer (www.asiabarometer.org), two surveys by Gallup (5, 6) (www.gallup.com), a survey by Horizon Research Consultancy Group (www.agmr.com/members/horizon.html), and the Pew Research Center’s 2011 Global Attitudes Project (http://www.pewglobal.org/category/datasets/).
See Commentary on page 9670.
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Competing Interests
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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