Happiness and Comparison Income: Evidence from Canada

During the past decade, there has been an increasing interest in the link between urban street design principles and the built environment in the field of urban studies. This interest is motivated by the possibility that design principles associated with the built environment can be used to manage individual activities and improve the quality of urban life. This paper proposes an approach which can be used to generate and prioritize important social indicators for designing urban street environment. The proposed approach integrates both analytic network process and zero-one goal programming methods into a quality function deployment planning in order to translate end-user needs into technical design requirements. User needs and technical requirements are explored, and the modeling result uncovers five important urban street environment design principles on quality of life’s satisfaction: transportation planning and parking development, guidelines for public transit and bus stops, landscape and open space design guidelines, pedestrian network planning and facility design guide, and street landscape. Overall, these important principles (five quality of life indicators) show future directions for the street environment improvements in Taipei City, Taiwan.     

The Effects of Employee Involvement and Participation on Subjective Wellbeing: Evidence from Urban China

This study examines how perceptions of the work context affect the job and career satisfaction of Chinese employees. Perceived organizational support (POS), procedural justice, and gender bias against women are considered as antecedents. Gender is expected to moderate the relationships between these antecedents and the outcome variables. The results of hierarchical regression analysis on data from 591 Chinese employees indicated that POS and procedural justice are positively related to employees’ job and career satisfaction. Additionally, gender acts as a moderator in the relationship between POS and job satisfaction, and between gender bias against women and career satisfaction.     

Income Inequality,Distributive Justice Beliefs,and Happiness in China: Evidence from a Nationwide Survey

Social Indicators Research - Recently, increasing numbers of scholars have given attention to the mechanism connecting income inequality and happiness. This paper uses a multilevel model to verify...     

Changes in Social Trust: Evidence from East German Migrants

Social Indicators Research - Using three waves of the Germany's individual-level panel data, this paper analyses whether there are any changes in the trust levels of East German migrants who...     

Relative Income and Happiness in Asia: Evidence from Nationwide Surveys in China, Japan, and Korea

This study attempts to examine relative income effects on perceived happiness in three major Asian countries—China, Japan, and Korea—in comparison with the United Sates, on the basis of largely comparable nationwide surveys in these countries. Consistent with the results from previous studies in Western countries, comparisons with an individual’s own income and average income of the reference group are significantly associated with the individual’s perceived happiness in Asia. The associations between relative income and happiness are stronger for individual income than family income in China, while the opposite is true in Japan and Korea. Even after controlling for the subjective assessment of family income or personal class identification within the society as a whole, income comparisons within the reference group matter for assessing happiness, especially when using family income for comparisons. Moreover, relative deprivation within the reference group, which is measured by the Yitzhaki index, is negatively related to happiness, providing more evidence for the validity of the relative income hypothesis.     

中国农业新政策变化的政策效应——来自2003～2006年田野调查与跟踪观察的农户数据

文章以湖北、山西、云南3省调查资料为基础,结合持续数年田野调查和固定观察,综合分析了样本家庭对新粮食政策和新税收政策的反应。研究发现,取消农业税等新政策实施后,农户家庭种粮的积极性有所提高,但其种粮动机并没有根本的改变;农户家庭对税费负担轻重的感觉变化明显趋好;农户人均纯收入水平呈现一种持续上升趋势,但政策对收入增长的贡献以税收政策效应为主,补贴效应为辅。其直接贡献份额相当有限,政策变革的效应仅是"引子"效应。     

Environment and Happiness: New Evidence for Spain

This paper explores the relationship between air pollution, climate and reported subjective well-being (or happiness) in Spanish regions. The results show that, after controlling for most of the socio-economic variables affecting happiness, there are still significant regional differences in subjective well-being. Evidence also suggests that climate and air pollution variables play a significant role in explaining these regional differences in happiness. The analysis also allows us to calculate the monetary value of air quality and climate, deriving the average marginal rate of substitution between income and air quality and climate for the Spanish regions.     

Human Empowerment and Trust in Strangers: The Multilevel Evidence

This study aimed to develop a social cohesion index for understanding the social relation between residents in high-rise group housing complexes through a self-reported questionnaire. As a background of the study, literature on social cohesion and related literature on residents’ social relation in high-rise housing were reviewed. Later, we selected different high-rise group housings of Kolkata, a city in the eastern region of India. We conducted few focus group surveys involving the residents of those high-rises and also conducted expert opinion surveys to identify a context-specific list of statements for evaluating residential social cohesion. Finally, based on the responses of interviews from 652 residents of the identified high-rise housings from the same city, followed by confirmatory factor analyses, three factors of residential social cohesion were identified with adequate reliability and validity. This index holds huge potential to explore residential social relation in high-rise housing and carry out empirical studies, across various disciplines, in other cities in the country and outside the country of similar socio-economic and cultural context.     

户籍制度对大学生工资的影响--来自北京市的证据

文章利用中国人民大学中国调查与数据中心组织的“2013年首都大学生成长跟踪调查”数据,采用倾向得分匹配法探究了户籍制度对于大学生工资的影响。研究发现：大学生在就业时面临着户口与待遇的选择困境,为了获得户口,大学生在某种程度上需要牺牲与自己人力资本特征相匹配的工作和工资待遇,不得不支付“户口成本”;在同等的人力资本条件下,大学生需要牺牲21％的工资待遇才能获得一纸户口;大学生中人力资本特征越高的群体,遭受的户口成本所带来的工资损失越大。基于以上发现,文章认为应该进行户口去福利化的改革,如此才能提升劳动力市场资源配置的效率,使得人尽其才。     

Elusive Effects of Unemployment on Happiness

This paper explores the connection between unemployment and subjective well-being in Finland using cross-sections for the years 1990, 1996 and 2000 from World Values Surveys. Interestingly, an unprecedented increase in the national unemployment rate (from 3 to 17%) did not produce a drop in the mean level of subjective well-being. Personally experiencing unemployment reduces life satisfaction, but does not have a significant effect on happiness in ordered logit estimation. However, generalized ordered logit estimation reveals that being unemployed has a negative effect on happiness at lower happiness scores, but no significant effect at high happiness levels.     

Welfare Costs of Inflation: Evidence from China

In this paper, we use the China General Social Survey 2010 data to estimate the impact of inflation on the welfare of residents. By using the happiness research approach, we find that on average, a 0.1 % rise in inflation rate will cause a welfare loss of about 73.0–164.1 RMB, mainly from unexpected inflation. Furthermore, welfare costs to different income groups vary significantly: for those whose household income reaches 100,000 RMB, the welfare loss resulted from a 0.1 % rise in inflation only reduces about 0.057 % of their income, while for the below 10 thousand income group, the cost is as high as 0.739 %. It also shows that there are substantial differences in different income groups’ sensitivities to different kinds of commodities. Specifically, low-income residents are seriously harmed by an increase in food and residence prices, whereas their middle-income counterparts are mainly affected by price changes in healthcare, personal articles, transportation, communication, recreation, and education. Besides, we find that subjective well-being of debtors are significantly boosted by inflation.     

Report of Survey on Family Happiness in China

The process and characteristics of China’s population change are unique in the world. In the past 60 years,China has not only experienced the peaks and busts of the size o births, but also the radical fluctuation of the total number of deaths, and large population migration and movement Especially in the last 30 years after     

Parenthood and Happiness: a Review of Folk Theories Versus Empirical Evidence

This paper reviews and compares folk theories and empirical evidence about the influence of parenthood on happiness and life satisfaction. The review of attitudes toward parenthood and childlessness reveals that people tend to believe that parenthood is central to a meaningful and fulfilling life, and that the lives of childless people are emptier, less rewarding, and lonelier, than the lives of parents. Most cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence suggest, however, that people are better off without having children. It is mainly children living at home that interfere with well-being, particularly among women, singles, lower socioeconomic strata, and people residing in less pronatalist societies??especially when these characteristics are combined. The discrepancy between beliefs and findings is discussed in relation to the various costs of parenting; the advantages of childlessness; adaptation and compensation among involuntarily childless persons; cognitive biases; and the possibility that parenthood confers rewards in terms of meaning rather than happiness.     

An Institutional Perspective on Individual Work Well-Being: Evidence from China

This paper evaluates how factors and values that are embedded in China’s changing institutional environment impact work well-being. Using firm level survey data, the paper examines how exogenous institutions—state ownership and individual traditionality—interact with firm level institutions—strategic human resource management (SHRM) and person-organisation fit (P-O fit) to influence workers’ job involvement. We find that state ownership weakens the effect of SHRM on workers’ job involvement while P-O fit does not. Individual traditionality on the other hand moderates the effects of SHRM and P-O fit on workers’ job involvement. Our study contributes to work well-being research in transitioning economies such as China and has consequences for labour market and SHRM policies.     

中国转型期技术应用对就业的影响研究——来自工业行业的考察

文章运用中国转型期1998～2004年工业行业的面板数据,实证分析了技术应用对行业就业数量及技能结构的影响,结果表明,技术应用对就业数量基本上有正的影响,同时也要求提高劳动者的技能结构。但不同类型的技术进步对就业的影响不同,与理论预期不同,过程创新一般对就业数量有正的影响,而产品创新对就业数量的影响为负或不显著。     

Political Democracy and the Physical Quality of Life: The Cross-National Evidence

Why do some countries have a high quality of life? One important explanation is that political democracy fosters life quality. Proponents of this perspective argue that political democracy acts to center the public agenda on state actions that enhance life quality. The cross-national effects of democracy (and several alternative variables) on the physical quality of life were examined for 87 countries at three points in time: 1970, 1980, and 1990. Results indicate the existence of a strong positive relationship between democracy and life quality for all three time periods.