A national household survey for 2002, containing a specially designed module on subjective well-being, is used to estimate pioneering happiness functions in rural China. The variables predicted by economic theory to be important for happiness are relatively unimportant. The analysis suggests that we need to draw on psychology and sociology if we are to understand. Rural China is not a hotbed of dissatisfaction with life, possibly because most people are found to confine their reference groups to the village. Relative income within the village and relative income over time, both in the past and expected in the future, are shown to influence happiness. 'Subjective well-being poverty' functions are estimated, in which income and various proxies for 'capabilities' and 'functionings' appear as arguments. Even amidst the poverty of rural China, social functionings, attitudes and expectations are important to subjective well-being.

This paper may be the first to link the literatures on migration and on subjective well-being in developing countries. It poses the question: why do rural-urban migrant households settled in urban China have an average happiness score lower than that of rural households? Three basic hypotheses are examined: migrants had false expectations about their future urban conditions, or about their future urban aspirations, or about their future selves. Estimated happiness functions and decomposition analyses, based on a 2002 national household survey, indicate that certain features of migrant conditions make for unhappiness, and that their high aspirations in relation to achievement, influenced by reference groups, also make for unhappiness. It is difficult to form unbiased expectations about life in a new and different world.

Using South African data, the paper poses six questions about the determinants of subjective well-being. Much of the paper is concerned with the role of relative concepts. We find that comparator income, when measured as the average income of others in the local residential cluster, enters the household's utility function positively (close neighbors are 'positives', not 'negatives'), but that the income of more distant others enters negatively. Race-based comparator groups are also important in racially divided South Africa. Relative income is more important to happiness at higher levels of absolute income. Potential explanations and implications of these results are considered

Introduction of the cytoplasmic domain of syntaxin 4, using either recombinant vaccinia virus or single-cell microinjection, resulted in an inhibition of insulin-stimulated GLUT4 but not GLUT1 translocation to the plasma membrane. This was specific for syntaxin 4, since neither the expression of syntaxin 3 nor the expression of a syntaxin 4 mutant in which the vesicle-associated membrane protein (VAMP) binding site was deleted had any significant effect. Consistent with the requirement for a functional VAMP binding site, expression of the cytoplasmic domains of VAMP2 or VAMP3/cellubrevin also resulted in an inhibition of insulin-stimulated GLUT4 translocation. In addition, immunoprecipitation of the expressed syntaxin 4 cytoplasmic domain resulted in an insulin-stimulated increase in the coimmunoprecipitation of GLUT4-containing vesicles. Together, these data demonstrate that syntaxin 4, VAMP2, and/or VAMP3/cellubrevin can function as target membrane and vesicle SNAP receptors, respectively, for insulin-responsive GLUT4 translocation to the plasma membrane.

Skeletal muscle GLUT-4 transcription in response to treatment with 5-aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide-1-beta-D-ribofuranoside (AICAR), a known activator of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), was studied in rats and mice. The increase in GLUT-4 mRNA levels in response to a single subcutaneous injection of AICAR, peaked at 13 h in white and red quadriceps muscles but not in the soleus muscle. The mRNA level of chloramphenicol acyltransferase reporter gene which is driven by 1,154 or 895 bp of the human GLUT-4 proximal promoter was increased in AICAR-treated transgenic mice, demonstrating the transcriptional upregulation of the GLUT-4 gene by AICAR. However, this induction of transcription was not apparent with 730 bp of the promoter. In addition, nuclear extracts from AICAR-treated mice bound to the consensus sequence of myocyte enhancer factor-2 (from -473 to -464) to a greater extent than from saline-injected mice. Thus AMP-activated protein kinase activation by AICAR increases GLUT-4 transcription by a mechanism that requires response elements within 895 bp of human GLUT-4 proximal promoter and that may be cooperatively mediated by myocyte enhancer factor-2.

Unemployment in South Africa is so widespread that it demands an explanation. This paper examines a central question about South African unemployment. Why do the unemployed not enter the informal sector, as is common in other developing countries? The data do not support the idea that unemployment is largely voluntary. The policy implications-that government should diminish labor market segmentation and the obstacles to entering the productive informal sector-may be relevant also to other developing countries with high unemployment.

The paper examines the contentious issue of the extent of surplus labour that remains in China. China was an extreme example of a surplus labour economy, but the rapid economic growth during the period of economic reform requires a reassessment of whether the second stage of the Lewis model has been reached or is imminent. The literature is inconclusive. On the one hand, there are reports of migrant labour scarcity and rising migrant wages; on the other hand, estimates suggest that a considerable pool of relatively unskilled labour is still available in the rural sector. Yet the answer has far-reaching developmental and distributional implications. After reviewing the literature, the paper uses the 2002 and 2007 national household surveys of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to analyse and explain migrant wage behaviour, to predict the determinants of migration, and to examine the size and nature of the pool of potential rural-urban migrants. An attempt is also made to project the rural and urban labour force and migration forward to 2020, on the basis of the 2005 one per cent Population Survey. The paper concludes that for institutional reasons both phenomena are likely to coexist at present and for some time in the future.

Two strictly comparable cross-section household datasets, relating to 1988 and 1995, are used to analyse the increase in wage inequality from an initially low level in urban China over this period of labour market reform. The institutional background and the evolution of policy are described. The rapid growth of wage inequality and the sharp widening of wage structure are quantified. Earnings functions are compared, and the increase in both the level and the inequality of wages are decomposed into their constituent elements. Quantile regression analysis is conducted to throw light on the relationships between the observed and the unobserved determinants of wages. Distinctions are made between the variables likely to represent human capital, discrimination, and segmentation. The evidence suggests that productive characteristics were increasingly rewarded as marketization occurred, but that discrimination and segmentation also grew. The move towards a fully-fledged labour market was by no means complete.JEL classifications: J31, J41, J42, J71, D31, D63.