Economics Analysis Of Chinese Residents’ Subjective Well-being

China has experienced a profound economic change and remarkable economicdevelopment Since reform and opening up. Both GDP and per capita income hasincreased dramatically. And the material standard of living also rises sharply. When thematerial life is no longer big question for most people, the resident’s happiness hasbecome the focus of attention. The economic is still developing, but the happiness ofChinese residents does not seem to be synchronized rising. On the contrary, it seemsappeared a downward trend which worried us a lot. This trend is a huge contrast to theachievements of the economic development. This is called the “Easterlin Paradox” or"Happiness Paradox", which refers to the Phenomenon that growth of output per cepitadoes not bring the same growth of the happiness of the residents.The ultimate goal of economic development and public policy are to enhance thecitizen’s happiness. The " Paradox of happiness " phenomenon is first proved to exist insome western countries, in the following decades, this phenomenon causes stronginterests of the foreign economists, and the study of it thus formed a new branch ofeconomics–“Hedonomics”. Foreign economists have achieved remarkable achievementsin the study. And with the development of the subject,“Hedonomics” has become theimportant branch of the economics study. By contrast, the research on the problem ofhappiness of domestic economists is not rich enough. For the purpose of making somecontributions on the researches of " Paradox of happiness " of China, this paper did someempirical researches on the influence of many factors to the happiness level of Chineseresidents, especially focus on the relationship between income and subjective well-beingof Chinese residents.As the basis of research on residents’ happiness problem, this paper first introducesthe concept of happiness. In this article, happiness refers to the individualsubjective well-being. This definition can be generally accepted by common people, andit was accepted by most scholars doing happiness research. This paper introduced thephenomenon of " Paradox of happiness " and the research of Hedonomics after that. Then, the descriptive statistics of the data of China shows that the“Paradox of happiness” alsoexisted in China. So, the study of the problem need to cause the attention of scholars, andwe expect the results of happiness research can provide some advice to China’s economicdevelopment policy and social public policy.In the following analysis, the data of this paper mainly comes from“China GeneralSocial Survey(CGSS)”.The analysis of the relationship between income and thesubjective well-being of people indicated that income has a statistically prominent impacton the subjective well-being of Chinese residents. But the degree of the impact is veryslight. The influence of income on happiness does not always be positive. Before incomereaches a certain critical level, the increase of income can to a certain extent, enhance thewell-being of residents; if income rises beyond that critical level, its increase will notgive raise to a higher degree of happiness, or even worse bring the opposite influence.Through the above results we can know that, to the people of different income levels, theeffect of income on happiness is not the same. Through the empirical research of Chineseresidents happiness, we can understand the change of residents’ happiness levels in thepast decades. We may also find some clues to the phenomenon of "Paradox of happiness" in China, which can be more in line with China’s unique national conditions. The policyimplication of this paper is important. First, considering the income of our countryresidents is still very low, we should continue to focus on the economic development, andstrive to improve the income level of residents.This is still helpful to improve theresidents’ happiness. Second, because when the income exceeds the critical level, theincrease of income can’t produce effective effect to the promotion of residents’ happinesslevels. The government can pay more attention to the low-income groups. At the sametime they can focus on other factors which is more effective than income.