A Study On The Residents’ Happiness In The Perspective Of Government Expenditure

For decades China’s economy has been growing rapidly, even though people’s living standards have been greatly improved, their happiness declined. Happiness is the eternal pursuit of mankind, but also the ultimate ownership of the ruling government. As the main means of government regulation, Government expenditure can promote residents’ happiness by acting on its factors. This paper established theoretical framework of how the scale and structure of government expenditures affect residents’happiness and used the ordered probit model to investigate its evidence. The empirical analysis is based on Chinese part of the world values survey data from 2001 to 2010.The study found that:(1)The association between the China’s economy and residents’ happiness is not that obvious in this period, happiness paradox does exist. Government expenditure affect residents’ happiness in the inverted U-shaped curve, that is to say in a certain rage government expenditure played a positive role, but its scale is not the bigger the better. (2) As to the structure of government expenditure, the impact of each category is different. The role of guarantee expenditure is the most active, and management expenditure also plays an indirect positive effect. The impact of construction expenditure is negative, because it needs to be experienced a long period of time to show its benefits.In view of this, the government should give full play to the fundamental role of public finance, expand the scale of government expenditure moderately, and further optimize the structure of government expenditure to promote residents’happiness.