The Statistical Measurement And Assessment On The National Happiness Index Of China

In recent years, National Happiness Index has drawn increasing attention. The way to define the happiness and quantify the happiness has become a new topic. Since the 70s of last century, the Kingdom of Bhutan proposed and impled the concept. Western countries followed and began to study Gross National Happiness Index. "Happiness economics" research is developing rapidly. Chinese National Happiness Index study starts later, and most remain at the theoretical stage, only do some empirical analysis of the provinces and cities.This paper measures NHI by comprehensive analysis of document data and demonstration. First, we build NHI index system by selecting 16 indicators like the per-capita GDP, Engel's coefficient etc base on the established evaluation index system and the request of "harmonious society"; secondly, we determine four common factors including the economic factors, environmental factors, population factors and social factors through the factor analysis method, and make indexation for their factors score; Then, the paper set the weight of each factor by using the variance contribution rate, so it can eliminate subjective factors, and we calculate the NHI 2007 is 43.2 percent. On this basis, this article does an in-depth analysis the situation from three angles.(1)This paper also does the horizontal comparison with the NHI of various provinces 2007, and it shows non-equilibrium nature of our national well-being by using Cluster Analysis, the eastern part compared with the central and western regions has a significant advantage. (2)We find that it's a winding phenomenon by vertical comparison the NHI from 2000-2007, and it is basically consistent with foreign scholars'study on Chinese NHI, it indicates the influence of the non-economic factors is increasing by the growth of the economy.(3) The correlation coefficient between NHI and the per-capita GDP reached 0.96, the statistical test is significantly correlated. It shows that although the changes in per-capita GDP and NHI are not totally consistent, but on the whole, a country or region's economic development in the more developed, their people feel higher degree of happiness. In the case of not been fully developed, it's the most to important way to improve people's happiness level by increasing income.We suggest that, it's clearly not enough reflecting a national or provincial socio-economic sustainable development based solely on GDP indicators, and the NHI will become an important foundation for reflecting the socio-economic conditions. Finally, we propose relevant policy recommendations to improve the level of NHI by combination the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan".