A House in Order: The Impact of Household Conditions on Subjective Well-Being in China

Abstract

Household infrastructure is one of the first aspects of individuals’ lives to change during economic development and an important determinant of physical and mental well-being. Existing scholarship about the determinants of subjective well-being center on the Easterlin paradox, whereby collective increases in income produce no improvement in subjective well- being within a society. However, previous work primarily studies western societies characterized by a high level of economic development. This senior thesis discusses theories of the determination of subjective well-being, such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Easterlin’s paradox, and questions their applicability to non-western societies experiencing economic development. Beginning with Nevis’ revised Chinese hierarchy of needs and fundamental differences in collectivist and individualist societies, the paper constructs a theoretical model for subjective well-being which asserts four major dimensions of determinants: micro, macro, material, and non-material. Aspects of each of the four classes in the Chinese context are described in the literature review before I hypothesize the significant role of improvements in household infrastructure on life satisfaction, and by extension subjective well-being. The China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) is utilized to create a novel household infrastructure composite variable. Multivariate regressions and t-tests are conducted to explore the relationship between living conditions and life satisfaction. The findings suggest that experiencing improvements in household infrastructure results in increased life satisfaction, although some aspects of household infrastructure are more salient to life satisfaction than others. From this analysis, the importance of adequate residential quality is reinforced, and the departure from western-based models of subjective well-being furthered.