Identity, Inequality, and Happiness: Evidence from Urban China

This paper presents the impact of income inequality on subjective well-being using data from the 2002 Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) Survey. We find that people feel unhappy with between-group inequality, as measured by the income gap between migrants without local urban hukou (household re...

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Veröffentlicht in:World development 2012-06, Vol.40 (6), p.1190-1200
Hauptverfasser: Jiang, Shiqing, Lu, Ming, Sato, Hiroshi
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:This paper presents the impact of income inequality on subjective well-being using data from the 2002 Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) Survey. We find that people feel unhappy with between-group inequality, as measured by the income gap between migrants without local urban hukou (household registration identity) and urban residents, irrespective of whether they are urban residents with or without local hukou. However, when we control for identity-related inequality and other individual, household, and city-level characteristics, inequality (as measured by city-level Gini coefficients) positively correlates with happiness. This study contributes to the inequality-happiness literature by distinguishing between the different effects of between-group and general inequality on happiness. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]
ISSN:0305-750X
1873-5991
DOI:10.1016/j.worlddev.2011.11.002