Subjective Well-being Of Urban And Rural Residents In Chengdu, A Comparative Study

This study is to investigate the subjective well-being of the downtown residents and the country residents of Chengdu in terms of life satisfaction , positive and negative affect; and also how these are affected by regional residency, gender, occupation and household income, etc. Specifically, 508 downtown residents and 479 country residents were selected by the method of Stratified Random Sampling, to receive individually either a written survey or a personal interview. All the data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, independent-sample t test and one-way ANOVA using SPSS11.0.Results and conclusions(1) Overall, although decreased due to the suffering from the severe earthquake in the last year, the subjective well-being of all the Chengdu residents is still quite high. (2) However, the country residents have significantly stronger subjective feeling of well-being than the downtown residents, showing higher life satisfaction and positive affect.(3) The female residents feel greater subjective well-being and happiness with better life satisfaction and more positive affect than the male residents generally. (4) However, there is no significant difference in this subjective well-being and happiness between the females of downtown residents and the females of the country residents; both male residents also fail to show this difference.(5) Among the both residents, the adults feel less subjective well-being and happiness than the seniors and adolescents and show lower level of life satisfaction and positive affect. (6) Moreover, the t-test shows that the seniors of the downtown residents have significantly higher life satisfaction and positive affect, and thus better feeling of the subjective well-being than those seniors resident in the country.(7) The results fail to show any correlation between the marriage status and the difference in the subjective well-being, positive affect and negative affect.(8) The data also demonstrate that people with moderate household income give the highest level of life satisfaction, positive affect and the subjective feeling of well-being and happiness.(9) It indicates among people with moderate or low household income, the downtown residents and the country residents have no difference in their feeling of subjective well-being and happiness.(10) However, for people with high household income, the downtown residents have happier feeling of subjective well-being than the country residents.(11) According to the results, the educational experience and degree show a great impact on the subjective feeling of well-being. People with degrees higher than the associate obtain a significantly higher score in the evaluation of positive affect and life satisfaction. However, for people without education experience more than middle school, the residents in the downtown have lower score in the positive affect and life satisfaction than those in the country. (12)The data show the occupation has no impact on the subjective feeling of well-being for the residents overall.(13) This study also shows in statistics that people who are jobless or has retired have the least positive affect and life satisfaction.