Height, Weight and Well-Being for Rural, Urban and Migrant Workers in China

Wang-Sheng Lee and Zhong Zhao

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2017, vol. 132, issue 1, No 7, 117-136

Abstract: Abstract In general, the happiness literature has paid little attention to the relationship between physical appearance and well-being. In this paper, we examine the link between weight, height and well-being for three distinct samples in China given that attractiveness effects likely vary greatly across sociocultural contexts. As China has recently undergone rapid economic transformation in the urban areas, this empirical exercise is particularly interesting because it can highlight how changing social norms have affected the relationship between physical appearance and subjective well-being. For the rural and migrant samples, we find that for both men and women, big and tall individuals have higher levels of well-being. This is consistent with the notion that the strong are better off when more labor intensive work is the norm. For the urban sample and for urban males in particular, no well-being penalty is found for being obese, unlike previous results based on Western samples. It is very likely that the unique Chinese cultural practice of network building banquets and feasting is behind this finding.

Keywords: China; Subjective well-being; Height; Weight; Semi-parametric (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-015-1143-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: Height, Weight and Well-Being for Rural, Urban and Migrant Workers in China (2015)
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:soinre:v:132:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s11205-015-1143-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-015-1143-y

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().