Great Expectations? The Subjective Well-being of Rural–Urban Migrants in China

Abstract

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.

Remittances and relative concerns in rural China

“…The magnitude of this correlation is similar across specifications and is usually statistically significant, with the exception of the specification related to household members in the remittance-receiving group. Such positive correlation is consistent with the results for developed countries (e.g., Dolan et al, 2008) and also with previous evidence from China (Knight et al, 2009;Knight and Gunatilaka, 2010;Akay et al, 2012). …”

“…This method allows for identifying positional concerns both for income and consumption of specific goods, such as cars and holidays (see, e.g., Alpizar et al, 2005;Carlsson et al, 2007;Hemenway, 1998, 2005;Akay et al, , 2013. 3 sometimes positive impact from relative concerns (see for South Africa: Kingdon and Knight, 2007;Bookwalter and Dalenberg, 2009;Ethiopia: Akay and Martinsson, 2011;China: Appleton and Song, 2008;Knight et al, 2009;Knight and Gunatilaka, 2010;Akay et al, 2012;Poland: Senik 2004Russia: Ravillion and Lokshin, 2000). 2 One possible explanation of the positive effect is the presence of altruistic feelings towards other members with which the individual interacts in, e.g., the local community.…”

Subjective Well-Being and Its Association with Subjective Health Status, Age, Sex, Region, and Socio-economic Characteristics in a Chinese Population Study

“…We were unable to include this group in the present study. However, some studies have investigated SWB among inner-immigrants in China (Akay et al 2012;Jiang et al 2012;Knight and Gunatilaka 2010b;Nielsen et al 2009). These studies have found that SWB among the innerimmigrants was not only worse than that among other urban residents but also worse than that among rural residents.…”

Wellbeing in China

“…Easterlin et al 2012). Studies have examined various aspects of the wellbeing of the urban populace (Appleton and Song 2008;Cheng et al 2014c;Frey and Song 1997;Gao et al 2014;Smyth et al 2010;Wu and Tam 2015); rural populace Knight et al 2009;Liang et al 2014b) and rural-urban migrants (Gao and Smyth 2011;Knight and Gunatilaka 2010;Nielsen et al 2010).…”