The Relation Between Local Government Performance And Citizens’ Subjective Well-Being

Rapid economic growth, complex social problems and severe ecological pollution constitute Chinese people’s multiple impressions of their living environment, people cast doubt on whether their life are happy or not. Stimulating economic growth has been the top priority of Chinese government for a long time, while social development is neglected. It leads to many issues of society and environment. Research shows that China’s economic growth has not increased Chinese people’s happiness. Under this circumstances, Chinese people’s happiness become the concern of all sectors of society. Government has an important effect on people’s well-being, now they should pay more attention to people’s life quality, and enhance their wellbeing. What really matters in this progress is government quality, which requires government voice and accountability. But does good governance really go together with higher happiness of citizens? Do the correlations depend on the government performance? These questions still remain.Based on existing research, this paper uses the results of 2011-2013 sampling survey from Guangdong Province, to explore the relationship between local government performance and citizens’ well-being. It might offers two ideas for researchers in this field: the first is ordered logit model is applied for exploring the relationship of local government performance and citizens’ well-being; the second is margin effect is considered in analyzing of whole sample and regional sample. Based on the results, a few policy recommendations follow. The conclusions of this paper include: from the whole sample regression results, government’s performance in maintaining social justice promotes citizens’ well-being in a good way; from the reginal sample regression results, local government performance of promoting economic development and maintaining social justice enhance citizens’ well-being obviously in Pearl River Delta, but other regions’ situation varies. Maintaining social justice has a significant positive impact on citizens’ well-being. These findings provide some hints for local government’s policy making, indicate that both economic growth and social justice, as well as the protection of ecological environment, are important to reginal development, they are all key factors associated with citizens’ well-being.