The Mystery of Chinese People’s Happiness

Hong Cheng, Chuan Chen, Dandan Li and Hongwei Yu ()
Additional contact information
Hong Cheng: Wuhan University
Chuan Chen: Wuhan University
Dandan Li: Wuhan University
Hongwei Yu: Wuhan University

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2018, vol. 19, issue 7, No 12, 2095-2114

Abstract: Abstract The great improvement in economic wealth and social welfare over the decade doesn’t promote the Chinese people’s happiness. We construct a theoretical framework which covers economic wealth, social welfare, individual functional capability to explore the impact factors and determinants of the Chinese people’s happiness. Based on a national wide questionnaire survey in China, we test and modify the framework by the method of structural equation model. The empirical findings indicate that there are direct and indirect effects on the formation of happiness. For the direct effect, both the increasing of economic wealth and social welfare improves the national happiness, while the individual functional capability reduces it. For the indirect effect, the individual functional capability also reduces happiness by negatively affecting economic wealth and social welfare. The negative effect that played by individual functional capability overwhelms the positive effect played by economic wealth and social welfare. This causes the Chinese people’s happiness goes down while the economic wealth and social welfare are improving. Finally, we conclude that the Chinese people’s happiness is more about individual functional capability rather than social welfare or economic wealth.

Keywords: Chinese people’s happiness; Economic wealth; Social welfare; Individual functional capability; Structural equation model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10902-017-9912-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jhappi:v:19:y:2018:i:7:d:10.1007_s10902-017-9912-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... fe/journal/10902/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10902-017-9912-8

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Happiness Studies is currently edited by Antonella Delle Fave

More articles in Journal of Happiness Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().