How Education Enhances Happiness: The Total Effect And The Mechanism

Using the datasets from CGSS2003and CGSS2008, this paperanalyzed the relationship between education and happiness of China’surban residents. Findings as follow:(1) Education has significantlypositive effect on happiness, and residents with higher education havehigher level of happiness;(2) Factors such as income, social capital andparty membership can affect residents’ happiness positively and are theimportant channels that education influences happiness;(3) Education’sinfluence on happiness increased during the period between2003and2008, with coefficients’ change from0.0484to0.0532; education canexplain3.3%of the total variance of urban residents’ happiness withstable effect between the two years; improved average education levelmay contribute to the increase of urban residents’ happiness between2003and2008;(4) The mechanisms that education affects happiness canbe different significantly between2003and2008; the channel of incomecan explain stable part of the total effect of education on happiness whilethat part can be explained by the channel of social capital and partymembership dropped between2003and2008;(5) Demographic variableslike gender, age and marital status have significant effect on urbanresidents’ happiness.