How Does Public Health Investment Affect Subjective Well-Being? Empirical Evidence from China

Yingzhu Yang, Lexiang Zhao and Feng Cui
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Yingzhu Yang: Department of Economics, School of Economics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Lexiang Zhao: China Investment Corporation Postdoctoral Center, Beijing 100010, China
Feng Cui: Department of Public Finance and Taxation, School of International Trade and Economics, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing 100029, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 9, 1-19

Abstract: Maximizing or improving residents’ subjective well-being is one of the basic purposes of public expenditure. As an important component of public expenditure, the impact of public health investment on residents’ subjective well-being receives considerable attention. Regarding the empirical evidence, this paper measures residents’ subjective well-being from the perspectives of overall cognitive happiness, life satisfaction, positive emotions and negative emotions, on the basis of a multi-level structural model of subjective well-being. Factor analysis is used to estimate the subjective well-being of residents at the province level in China, based on the China Family Panel Studies of 2018. In addition, structural equation modeling is employed to explore the impact of public health investment and its regional disparity on the subjective well-being of residents. The empirical results show that public health investment has a significant positive effect on residents’ subjective well-being. Moreover, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the regional disparity of public health investment and residents’ subjective well-being. Further study illustrates that the effects of public health investment and its regional disparity on residents’ subjective well-being are heterogeneous by group. Public health investment has a greater impact on the well-being of low- and middle-income, eastern and urban residents than high-income, midwest and rural residents.

Keywords: public health investment; regional disparity; subjective well-being; individual relative deprivation index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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