The Study of Chinese Happiness﹣Income"" Paradox""
Date Issued
2016
Date
2016
Author(s)
Wei, Yu-Lin
Abstract
This paper aims to analyze Chinese ""happiness-income"" problem, the measurement of the Chinese residents'' happiness index adopted is primarily subjective well-being index. Unlike the existing literatures, this paper includes the objective happiness index. This paper chooses two macroeconomic variables-regional economic openness and objective happiness-into the model. In order to eliminate the collinearity of the two variables not only in economic logic but also in statistics, using one section, this paper analyzes the reason of collinearity and regression results, concluding that regional economic openness has a positive effect on the objective happiness index. On this basis, this paper analyzes the relationship between the subjective well-being and income. First, this paper builds a model which involves income as the core variable, other factors as the auxiliary variable and subjective well-being as explained variable. This model illustrates that the impact of income on subjective well-being is divided into three stages. When income is in the level from a lower level to the first critical income, its influence on subjective well-being is mainly through the survivability need products consumption, and at this level the effect of income on happiness is obvious. When income is in the level from the first critical point to the second critical income, its effect on subjective well-being is mainly through the spiritual need of product consumption. At the start of this stage, it is prone to have ""happiness - income"" paradox, and the impact of income on subjective well-being is not obvious. The third stage is ideal, which is similar to the state of the kingdom of freedom. In order to validate the conclusion of the model, and answer the existence of ""happiness -income"" paradox and view other factors influence on subjective well-being, this paper uses the descriptive analysis and the regression model. The result of descriptive analysis is that the subjective well-being increases with income and then declines, which seems to support the existence of Chinese ""happiness- income"" paradox. The results are the same when dividing the sample according to other factors. But regression model shows that the regression coefficient of income is significantly positive and the regression coefficient of income square is significantly negative. The conclusion explains from statistics the reason of emergence of Chinese ""happiness-income"" paradox, that is the ignorance of a lot of related variables. By observing the effects of other variables on happiness, we think that the effects of other factors on happiness offset the effect of income on happiness, which can be explained the reason of the phenomenon of ""happiness-income""paradox.That income increases while happiness drops is a pseudo ""happiness-income"" paradox. Income still promotes happiness. Finally, we analyze the influence of the micro and macro factors on happiness, concluding that the political background, marital status, gender, belief, social trust, social justice have obvious positive effect on happiness, meanwhile national type has a significant negative effect on happiness, and objective happiness index has significant positive promotion effect on subjective well-being.
Subjects
objective happiness
subjective well-being
Type
thesis