Institutional Differences in Individual Wellbeing in China

An imbalanced distribution of income and welfare characterizes a developing or transitional economy such as China’s. Even after forty years of reform and rapid economic growth, there is still considerable disparity in wellbeing across different institutional settings in China. Major inequalities exist between rural and urban areas, public and for profit sectors, and state-owned and private enterprises. This paper presents the descriptive differences in individual wellbeing across these kinds of institutional settings from objective and subjective perspectives, enabled by the five waves of the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS; the years of 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015). The results show that: (1) people in urban China enjoy more objective wellbeing than people in rural China, but less subjective wellbeing; (2) people who work for the public sector enjoy more objective and subjective wellbeing than those for the for profit sector; (3) people who work for the state owned enterprises enjoy more objective wellbeing than those for the for profit sector, but subjective happiness is not significantly different. Furthermore, people’s perception of subjective wellbeing not only relies upon substantive objective wellbeing, but also an affiliation with a certain type of institution.

City Size and Permanent Settlement Intention: Evidence from Rural-Urban Migrants in China

The location choice and livelihoods of rural-urban migrants are critical to the sustainable development of cities. By using data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) in 2017, this paper extant the Rosen–Roback’s model by adding factors of urban social network and air pollution to the function of the individual utility of migrants. Both the Probit Model and IV estimates imply evidence of an inverse U-shaped pattern of city size and migrants’ permanent settlement in urban China. This view proves that Chinese migrants like to settle permanently in large cities, but not mega-cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai. The internal mechanism is explained by the agglomeration economies and the crowing effect brought by city size. In mega-cities, the attractiveness of the city caused by wage premium cannot offset the combined repulsive force caused by the high housing price, bad urban social network, air pollution, and health deterioration. It is worth noting that air pollution has a significant negative impact on the settlement intention of migrants, such as health conditions and precipitation. Besides, there is heterogeneity among high-skilled migrants and low-skilled migrants in different city sizes. Our findings enhance the understanding of “Escape from megacities” in China and have implications for the reform of the housing security system and the exploration of the urbanization path.

The Impact of the Dynamics of Agglomeration Externalities on Air Pollution: Evidence from Urban Panel Data in China

Air pollution in China has become a matter of increasing public concern. In this paper, we attempted to build a theoretical model to explore the impact of the dynamics of agglomeration externalities on haze pollution in urban China, where agglomeration is differentiated by regional specialization and geographical concentration. Based on China’s panel data for 289 cities during the period of 1998–2018, the empirical result shows that the relationship between industrial agglomeration and urban haze pollution is not simply linear or of an inversed U-type but turns out to be dynamically N-shaped. To be specific, the increase in local haze pollution can be explained by agglomeration externalities in the beginning stage, whereas the reducing effect only occurs during the mature stage. The heterogeneity test indicated that the effect of the type of agglomeration on haze pollution seems to be mixed in different groups of cities, but is still consistent with the hypothesis of the dynamic change of agglomeration externalities. The results are found to be quite robust and consistent after replacing variables and using other regression methods. This paper provides answers to the question of how to coordinate the relationship between developing industry parks and air pollution in terms of the life cycle of agglomeration as well as the types of city.

Mothers’ Experience of Social Change and Individualistic Parenting Goals Over Two Generations in Urban China

During the past four decades, China has gone through rapid urbanization and modernization. As people adapt to dramatic sociodemographic shifts from rural communities to urban centers and as economic level rises, individualistic cultural values in China have increased. Meanwhile, parent and child behavior in early childhood has also evolved accordingly to match a more individualistic society. This mixed-method study investigated how social change in China may have impacted parenting goals and child development in middle childhood, as seen through the eyes of the current generation of mothers. Thirty mothers of fifth-grade elementary school students from Shenzhen, China were recruited and took part in semi-structured interviews. Participants answered questions and provided examples about their children’s life, their own childhood, and the perceived differences between the two generations. Participating mothers were also asked to rate which generation, themselves or their parents, cared more about the childrearing goals of academic competitiveness and socioemotional well-being. Using both qualitative and quantitative analysis, we expected and found an intergenerational increase in the perceived value mothers placed on individualistic traits: current mothers care more about their children’s academic competitiveness, personal happiness, and social adjustment, compared to their experience of their own mothers’ attitudes during their childhood a generation earlier. They also experience conflict between their children’s academic competitiveness and socioemotional well-being. As a function of both urbanization and increased economic means, children’s collectivistic family responsibilities for essential household chores have declined as the importance of schoolwork has increased.