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Journal of Happiness Studies
Published in: Journal of Happiness Studies 8/2019

01-12-2018 | Research Paper

Well-Being in Transition: Life Satisfaction in Urban China from 2002 to 2012

Authors: Robson Morgan, Fei Wang

Published in: Journal of Happiness Studies | Issue 8/2019

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Abstract

The improving strength of the labor market is chiefly responsible for the overall increase in life satisfaction in urban China from 2002 to 2012. This is especially true for the segment of the population most vulnerable to the negative effects of the on-going transition to a free-market based economy—people with less than a college education. Income comparison and habituation effects offset any positive effect of increased personal income during this time. The result is that increases in income are not significantly related to the increase in life satisfaction during this time. In the interest of protecting the life satisfaction of those most vulnerable, attention must be paid to maintaining a strong labor market as internal migration restrictions are loosened and the labor market is further liberalized in China. These findings are based on repeated cross-sectional data spanning from surveys used in the annual economic reports published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. A modified version of the Oaxaca decomposition method is developed to take advantage of annual data and also control for adaptation to income effects. The change in life satisfaction from 2002 to 2012 is then divided into segments associated with changes in various life domains.
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Appendix
Available only for authorised users
Footnotes
1
Cities of survey were determined first. Then, within each city, the central district along with other randomly selected districts were targeted for sampling. Communities within the selected districts were randomly chosen for sampling. Finally, households in a selected community were randomly chosen according to the rule of “sampling one household after passing by five households”. One respondent was randomly determined within each selected household to complete the survey.
 
2
Another reason of dropping the rural sample is that selected rural villages were generally incomparable over time, and for some years, rural surveys were not conducted.
 
3
The seven cities are not representative of urban China. Nevertheless, the data includes typical cities in all regions of China. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Shenyang, Xi’an, and Chengdu belong to North China, East China, South China, Central-south China, Northeast China, Northwest China and Southwest China.
 
4
In this paper, the term “subjective well-being” is used to refer to self-reported evaluations of a person’s happiness or satisfaction with life. These measures are considered comparable because they correlate with the same explanatory variables (Helliwell et al. 2012).
 
5
City dummies and year dummies capture all regional and temporal factors, including demographic structures, socio-economic development, public policies, and so on, that might be related to individual subjective well-being. For example, Huang (2018) finds that city-level income inequality significantly affects individual happiness.
 
6
Household size is not controlled in analyses because only a couple of years of surveys include this variable. For the years with household size, results are similar no matter if household size is considered or not.
 
7
Original income categories varied by year, and were unified to the same set of categories. Continuous measures of income were not recorded in the data.
 
8
There are 56 groups in each year. Groups cannot be smaller as the sample size of a group would be too small to generate reliable statistics.
 
9
The previous income of respondents in 2007 is their predicted income in 2005.
 
10
Clark et al. (2008) offer a review.
 
11
Different age group dummies were inserted into the analysis for robustness checks. The results did not change.
 
12
The sample of year 2001 will be only used to generate the previous income of year 2002.
 
13
In the pooled cross-sectional regression \(\widehat{LS}_{i,t} = \varvec{x}_{i,t} \widehat{\beta } = \varvec{z}_{i,t} \widehat{\varvec{\gamma}} + \sum_{t = 2001}^{2012} d_{t} \widehat{\delta }_{t}\), where \(d_{t}\) is a dummy for year t, \(\hat{\delta }_{t}\) will be chosen, by construction, so \(\overline{{\widehat{LS}}}_{t} = \overline{LS}_{t}\) for each t.
 
14
"Appendix 3" details how p values were calculated.
 
15
Hukou status reflects if a person is registered as an urban or rural resident. People residing in urban areas with rural hukou status are migrants from rural areas in China.
 
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Metadata
Title
Well-Being in Transition: Life Satisfaction in Urban China from 2002 to 2012
Authors
Robson Morgan
Fei Wang
Publication date
01-12-2018
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Published in
Journal of Happiness Studies / Issue 8/2019
Print ISSN: 1389-4978
Electronic ISSN: 1573-7780
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-018-0061-5

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