The Influence Of Income Inequality On National Happiness In Emerging Economies

The ultimate goal of national economic development is to maximize national welfare.How to improve national well-being has become the core issue of governments.In the past decades,with the continuous economic development of countries and regions,the income gap has shown a widening trend.It is not clear about how income inequality in emerging economies affects national well-being,so exploring the impact of income inequality on national well-being in emerging economies,clarifing the mechanism,and analyzing the differences between emerging economies and developed economies,these are conducive to obtaining more ways to improve national well-being and providing certain theoretical basis for countries to solve the problem of income inequality.It has very important practical significance.In order to explore the impact of income inequality on national well-being in emerging economies,based on the theory of relative deprivation and the tunnel effect,the paper constructs a multi-level statistical model and a fixed-effect model for empirical analysis through the collation and regression of World Values Survey(WVS)and Standardized World Income Inequality(SWIID)data.On the basis of studying the impact of income inequality on national well-being in emerging economies,based on the resource endowment theory,informal system theory and Roemer’s opportunity inequality theory,established the moderating effect model from the perspectives of social equity and social capital,exploring the mechanism and dynamic changes of income inequality affecting national well-being,the differences between emerging economies and developed economies.The specific research contents of this paper are as follows:(1)By constructing an economic model including income and non-income factors,extending the traditional utility theory hypothesis,establishing the subjective well-being model,solving the optimization of well-being function,which provides a good theoretical basis for the subsequent research.Based on Roemer’s theory of inequality of opportunity,this paper constructs a model of individual labor market participation,and discusses the impact of income inequality on national well-being based on resource endowment theory and informal system theory.(2)From the perspective of expected income and class mobility expectation,the paper discusses how social equity moderates the influence of income inequality on national wellbeing,and establishes the moderating effect model of social equity.From the perspective of economic benefits and mental health,the paper analyses how social capital moderates the impact of income inequality on national well-being,and establishes a model of the moderating effect of social capital.(3)According to the status of economic development,emerging economies are divided into three stages: initial stage,development stage and rise stage.Using the World Inequality Database(WID),the World Income Inequality Database(WIID),the Standardized World Income Inequality Database(SWIID)and the World Bank WDI database,the paper summarizes the dynamic evolution trajectory of income inequality in emerging economies and analyzes the differences among emerging economies.Using the data from the World Values Survey(WVS)and the Gallup World Poll(GWP),this paper analyzes the overall trends,country comparisons and group differences of national wellbeing in emerging economies.(4)Based on the micro individual data of 28 emerging economies during 1981-2019,using multi-level statistical model and fixed effect model,analyzed the relationship between Gini coefficient and national well-being empirically,and explored the dynamic change.The results show that national well-being rises first and then falls as income inequality increases,and the positive effect of income inequality on national well-being has been weakening over time.Further attempts are made to solve the endogeneity problem by using fixed effect,instrumental variable method and constructing proportional function.According to the level of per capita GDP,net Gini coefficient and per capita GDP level,the emerging economies were grouped and tested for heterogeneity.Basing on Kuznets inverted U-shaped curve theory,the paper analyzes the influence of income inequality on national well-being in developed economies.Meanwhile,using different income inequality indicators such as the total Gini coefficient,the Tell index,the Atkinson index and the Parmesan ratio,the Ologit model,the Oprobit model and different samples of emerging economies,robustness tests were conducted.(5)Based on the theory of inequality of opportunity,from the perspective of expected income and class mobility expectation,the paper explores the influence and dynamic change of social equity moderating income inequality on national well-being in emerging economies,and compare between emerging economies and developed economies.The results show that the higher the degree of social equity in emerging economies,the higher the level of national well-being,and the stronger the positive impact of income inequality on national well-being.In emerging economies,the effect of social equity positively moderating the impact of income inequality on national well-being is declining.In the further study,according to Roemer’s theory of inequality of opportunity,the paper calculates the actual degree of equity in China.From the perspectives of perceived equity and actual equity,analyzing social equity moderates the influence of income inequality on national well-being,and the different effects of income inequality on national well-being in counties where perceived justice and actual justice are inconsistent.(6)The paper improved Putnam’s theory of social capital,divided social capital into social trust and social network.Based on the resource endowment theory and the informal system theory,from the perspective of economic benefits and mental health,the paper explores the moderating role of social capital in the process of income inequality affecting emerging economies national well-being and explore the differences between emerging and developed economies.The moderating effects of components of social capital in different development stages of emerging economies are further analyzed.The empirical results show that with the increase of social trust and social network,the positive impact of income inequality on national well-being in emerging economies is weakening,and the moderating effect of social network is greater than that of social trust.The level of social trust in developed economies is much higher than that in emerging economies,and the moderating effect of social trust is greater.The innovations of the paper are mainly reflected in the following four aspects:(1)By constructing an individual labor market participation model and subjective well-being model that include income and non-income factors,income inequality,social equity,social capital and national well-being are integrated into the theoretical model.(2)The net Gini coefficient is used in this paper to measure the degree of income inequality in emerging economies.The net Gini coefficient reflects the inequality of individual real disposable income after tax and welfare adjustment,and can better reflect the real economic conditions of individuals.(3)This paper constructs an individual labor market participation model,which can help individuals identify the optimal level of effort after entering the labor market.At the same time,the perceived equity and the actual equity are put into the analysis model,and the perceived equity will change with the actual equity.(4)According to three development stages of emerging economies,the dynamic moderating effects of social equity and social capital are analyzed.From aspects of economic benefits and mental health,the paper explores the influence and dynamic changes of social capital(social trust and social network)on income inequality in emerging economies.