Research On Urban Scale And Subjective Well-being Of Residents

By the end of 2018,the urbanization rate has reached 59.58% in China.Urbanization development has made remarkable achievements in China,but the improvement of urbanization level is not the ultimate goal of urbanization.The urbanization process brings happiness to people is the fundamental purpose of urbanization.In the process of urbanization development,whether to continue to develop into a large city or to gradually decentralize the development of small and medium-sized cities is an important policy choice for future urban development in China.The study of the relationship between urban scale and subjective well-being can provide evidence support for this choice.Firstly,at the theoretical level,this paper analyzes the influence mechanism of urban scale on the subjective well-being of urban residents from the perspectives of negative externalities and positive externalities.It is found that environmental pollution and public services are the main ways in which urban scale affects the subjective wellbeing of urban residents.On the basis of theoretical analysis,using the urban macro data and the China Household Income Survey(CHIP)microdata,using the two-stage least squares method(2SLS),firstly,from negative externalities caused by urban scale expansion,environmental pollution is used as a proxy variable to empirically analyze the relationship between urban scale and subjective well-being of urban residents;then from positive externalities caused by the expansion of urban scale,public service is used as a proxy variable to empirically analyze the relationship between urban scale and subjective well-being of urban residents.Through the above research,the paper draws the following conclusions:(1)In general,urban scale and the subjective well-being of urban residents are “inverted U”.Whether the urban scale will improve the subjective well-being of urban residents is determined by negative externalities and positive externalities.(2)For the first-tier and second-tier cities,environmental pollution has a significant negative impact on the subjective well-being of urban residents.Because of the existence of “urban scale threshold” effect,cities such as Beijing and Chongqing have become more concentrated due to the expansion of scale,the negative impact of environmental pollution is reduced.For other cities,environmental pollution has no significant impact on the subjective well-being of urban residents.(3)Providing public services requires a certain amount of cost,and the improvement of public service levels may not enhance the subjective well-being of urban residents in all cities.Because of the existence of “urban scale threshold” effect,the subjective well-being of urban residents in large cities will increase with the level of public services,and the subjective well-being of urban residents in small and medium-sized cities will decline with the improvement of public service levels.There are significant differences in the impact of urban scale and public services on urban residents with different income levels.Improving public service levels can significantly improve the subjective well-being of low-income and middleincome groups,but it has no significant impact on the subjective well-being of highincome groups.Finally,this paper proposes relevant policy recommendations based on research findings.