The More, the Merrier? on the Relationships of Democracy and Happiness in China

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.200205.029How to use a DOI?

Keywords

subjective well-being, China democracy, heteroscedasticity

Abstract

Happiness is associated with and precedes numerous successful outcomes. According to the research conducted by United Nations Development Program, the subjective feeling of happiness, or more formally subjective well-being (SWB), serves as a critical indicator for quality of life - health, longevity, income and social skill. Among many potential antecedents of SWB, political and social scientists have long debated on whether democracy can bring happiness. Despite numerous research conducted, the results are far from conclusive. I argue that one important reason causing the inconsistencies of the findings is that the definition of democracy varies across countries, especially among non-western countries. In the specific context of China, researchers have found that the majorities in the country agree on the Confucian model of democracy, characterized by strong support for the governing regime and the Confucian culture. Because of the various potential definition of democracy, the application of subjective measurements of democracy is preferable in that it effectively takes into account the variations of the personal definition of democracy. The current study investigates the impact of subjective measurement of democracy (i.e. perceived level of democracy of the nation) on individual’s SWB, using a sample of Chinese residents. In addition to directly examining the effects of democracy on SWB, I tested additional hypotheses concerning the group differences of such effects. I utilized the Chinese dataset from World Value Survey (WVS) Wave 6, which consisted of the responses from a representative Chinese sample. The hypotheses were tested with stepwise linear regression. The results confirmed my hypothesis that the perceived level of democracy was positively related to individual SWB, and that the income level positively moderated such effect. However, surprisingly, I also found that the social class negatively affected the relationship between perceived level of democracy and individual SWB. The potential explanation as well as the implications of the findings were discussed. Last, I address the limitations of the current study and pinpoint two directions for future research: (1) longitudinal studies could be carried out to theoretically avoid the endogeneity problem and replicate the current findings; (2) more researches are needed on how social policies would affect SWB in non-western context.

Copyright

© 2020, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Ling Xu
PY  - 2020
DA  - 2020/02/13
TI  - The More, the Merrier? on the Relationships of Democracy and Happiness in China
BT  - Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Social Science, Public Health and Education (SSPHE 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 133
EP  - 137
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.200205.029
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.200205.029
ID  - Xu2020
ER  -