Research About The Impact Of Levels Of Education Equality On Residents’ Happiness

Happiness is human’s eternal pursuit.The development goal of any country or economy is to improve people’s living standard,and make them live happily as soon as possible.With the rapid development of Chinese economy,the income increases,but the subjective well-being of residents in China has not ascending simultaneously.Instead their happiness shows a downtrend.This deviates from the economic development.This phenomenon is called the "Easterlin paradox".The causes of the paradox are not clear at present.Most scholars studied the relationship from the perspective of income,but the conclusion is not consistent.On existing literatures,focusing on the results(such as the income or income inequality)leads to different conclusions,without trying to interpret from the source.Education influences income and determines a country’s development potential in a large extent in the future.Some scholars started to study the relationship between education and well-being.The result is also different.Because the black box of education how to impact on happiness has not been opened.Moreover,Friedman(1980)put forward that justice is the most fundamental.This article attempts to start with education inequality and to talk about the education inequality how to influence the subjective well-being.First of all,the text sort out and summary the related literature about happiness.It aims at knowing of the research status between education inequality and the residents’ well being.I try to make marginal contribution that I can make in this area.Secondly,I will study the theoretical foundation and the transmission mechanism about education inequality on the happiness and put forward the corresponding theoretical hypothesis.Next,the passage adopt the generalized entropy of the Atkinson index measuring education inequality,self assessment of happiness to measure subjective well-being,the data of Chinese general social survey(CGSS2011)and Oprobit model to study the relationship between education inequality and happiness.In addition,education inequality measured by the Gini coefficient and tests the robustness of the above results.Due to various reasons,self assessment of happiness may be reported the possibility of false information.So it is necessary to use event happiness to reflect the real condition.At the same time,using the Atkinson index and gini coefficient of education to measure education inequality and regard them as explanatory variable,adopting the OLS model to study the link between education inequality and subjective well-being.Comparing and analyzing the similarities and differences among these conclusions.Finally,the inequality of education is divided into two types,one is extension education inequality that is the difference of education caused by non-family environment,and the other is connotative education inequality that the difference of education caused by some individuals factors are uneasy to change related to its own and family background.Based on regression equation and Shapley’s decomposition,we calculate the two types of education inequality’s contribution to the total education inequality.The conclusion of the paper includes six aspects.Firstly,the regressed results are unstable when we use subjective well-being as explained variable.Residents are prone to be happy when the degree of education inequality is low with controlling the personal characteristics,where the education inequality is measured by Atkinson index.But when we controlled the variables of region、schooling hukou、income、the gap between the desired and the real social status rank,education inequality has no insignificant influence on well-being.When we replace the Atkinson index with the Gini index,we find that education inequality has a significant negative impact on subjective well-being.It decreases 3.24 directly and 3.40 totally,when education inequality measured by Atkinson index increases one unit.It decreases 3.92 directly and 3.99 totally,when education inequality measured by Gini index increases one unit.It increases significantly the possibility of totally unhappy、less unhappy and indescribable happiness,the probabilities that is reduced respectively are 0.0148、0.0342 and 0.0381.It also reduces the possibility of very happy.The possibility values 0.0872.In other models,the degree of educational equality has not any apparent influence on subjective well-being.Although the two point is different,it can illustrate education inequality in China severely damages happiness of residents.Thirdly,different explained variables draw inconsistent conclusions,which indicate the main stream of happiness can be adopted and need to be improved.Moreover,no matter use subject well-being or event happiness to measure happiness,no matter what kind of index was adopted to measure education inequality.The direct impact of education inequality on the well-being of happiness is greater than the indirect effect.In addition,residents will be divided into three groups according to the hukou of individuals attend to school.The three groups include three types’ people.One is hukou always being agriculture,another is people whose hukou converted to non-agriculture when they attend to school,and the last is people whose hukou always be non-agriculture.The result is whose well-being cannot be influenced by education inequality if their hukou did not change during they attended school,but for those hukou converted to non-agriculture,their happiness will be increase along with education inequality aggrandizing.So,the three groups exist difference.In the end,the proportion of the extension education inequality in the total education inequality is much higher than that of the connotation type according to the decomposition results of education inequality.So when we decide to reduce education inequality to a proper range,we need to improve from the extension aspects.For example,improve teacher student ratio,expand the area of the library,augment the capacity of public libraries,add investment in education funds.In the end,this passage points out the questions exist in the research and the further research direction.