| Subjective happiness refers to general appraise of people for their living status. It is a very popular subjective indicator. Based on analyzing the problems of the present development and introducing the characteristics of the indicator of the people's quality of life, this paper proposes that we need the subjective indicator to deprive the "mean" and "goal" and measure quality of life directly. Then we emphases subjective happiness, connecting with the concepts of Gross National Happiness (GNH) and Happy Life Expectance (HLE), which are suggested by Bhutan Government. By analyzing the GNH and HLE, this paper finds that they can take as the indicators of evaluating development state of a region (the ability of satisfying local residents' needs).Using theory about these indicators (subjective happiness,GNH and HLE), taking the Heihe river basin for example, this paper do a empirical study. It is tries to analyze three problems: (1) the relationship of the individual's subjective happiness and its economical-social characteristics; (2)the influencing factors of people's satisfaction level ; (3) appraisement of GNH and HLE for the Heihe river basin; and (4) the contributions to GNH of four basic types of capital: human, social, built and natural capital.Firstly, In the base of analyzing the relationship of the individual's subjective happiness and its economical -social characteristics, it finds that there is an U-shaped relationship between people's subjective happiness and their age, the nadir of age is 50. Happiness feeling of females is higher than that of males. Marriage can't substantiality make progresses on people's happiness feeling, but divorce and bereft of one's spouse can fall people's subjective happiness. People's subjective happiness increases slowly with the improvement of education level. there is no obvious relation between people's subjective happiness and their regional faith. It finds that the index of people's happiness enhances with the increasing of wealth one possesses, and consists with Law of diminishing marginal utility.Secondly, this paper calculates GNH and HLE for the Heihe river basin at county level, and appraises the development status for the Heihe river basin using GNH and HLE. In the whole, the development status of county in the Heihe river basin is at middle or superior levels. But there are difference within county and between city and country. In the county level, those which have better development status are Jia-Yu-Guan and Jin-Xiang; in the villages and towns level, those which have better development status are Da-zhuang-zi in Su-Zhou and Ming-hua in Su-Nan.Thirdly, this paper investigates the contributions to GNH of four basic types of capital: human, social, built and natural. Date on proxies for those four basic types of capital were available for 82 villages and towns in the Heihe river basin. HDI includes proxies for both built and human capital. Natural capital is calculated by unit area value of ecosystem service. As GNH and HLE, social capital is calculated by the same inquisitional questionnaire. Regressing models show that natural capital, HDI and social capital are important factors in explaining GNH, their coefficients are 0.29, 1.12 and 4.23. This suggests that When factors such as natural capital, HDI and social capital increased by 1 unit, the GNH will separately increase 0.29, 1.12 and 4.23 units.Finally, there are some policy suggestions:(1) Improve rural medical treatment condition, when develop region economy.(2) Develop actively ecological environment building.(3) Cultivate social capital: encouraging to build the regional network and organization; promoting the regional culture development.
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