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The Relationship Between the Gender Gap in Subjective Well-Being and Leisure Activities in China

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Abstract

This study explains the observed gender gap in subjective well-being (SWB) in China using heterogeneous marginal utility derived from leisure hours. We find that women in China exhibit higher levels of well-being than men and that there is a conditional unexplained gender gap in SWB ranging between 0.15 and 0.17. This conditional gap can be partly (30–40%) explained by the gender difference in the marginal utility of leisure hours. Meanwhile, we find a strong negative effect of hours spent on housework. These findings are robust to a variety of model specifications and subsamples.

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Notes

  1. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics and International Labour Office (https://www.bls.gov/fls/chartbook/chart2.2.pdf).

  2. The Easterlin paradox questions the correlation of income and happiness. Easterlin (1974) shows that although many counties experienced a substantial GDP growth in the past several decades, their residents’ well-being levels do not increase correspondingly. It is worth noting that the original Easterlin paradox has already been questioned and modified (e.g., Stevenson and Wolfers 2008).

  3. Sabrina V. Lima (2011). “A cross-country investigation of the determinants of the happiness gender gap.” Working paper.

  4. For example, Turkey (İlkkaracan 2012), Canada (MacDonald et al. 2005), Europe and North America (Ferber et al. 2004).

  5. Before the SWB questions, a list of questions was asked to help respondents conceive their subjective well-being.

  6. A U-shaped age-happiness curve with the lowest level of SWB occurring at middle age is widely documented in the existing literature (e.g., Dolan et al. 2008; Blanchflower and Oswald 2008).

  7. The hukou system is a record required by law in China. It determines where citizens are allowed to live, and it usually correlates with various public services and welfare benefits. There are two types, agricultural and non-agricultural. More details are provided in Song (2014).

  8. Some studies in China find different results. For example, Jiang et al. (2012) investigate inequality (Gini coefficient) instead of relative income and find that residents do not always feel unhappy with an increase in others’ income. Liu and Shang (2012) show that the effect of one’s own income is, in magnitude, as strong as the effect of comparison income.

  9. A recent study in migration is Xu (2016).

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Acknowledgements

We thank two anonymous referees and the editor for their valuable suggestions. We are incredibly grateful to the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71703100) and Research Fund of Ministry of Education of China (17YJCZH267) for financial support. Also, this project is sponsored by the Shanghai Pujiang Elite Program(16PJC060). In addition, this research also received funding from Shanghai Jiao Tong University's USC-SJTU Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry, and from Zizhu National High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, via the Zizhu New Media Management Research Center. The data are from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), funded by 985 Program of Peking University and carried out by the Institute of Social Science Survey of Peking University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cultural Industry and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, No. 800, Dongchuan Road, Minhang District, Shanghai, 200240, People’s Republic of China

    Dong Zhou

  2. Institute of Economics and Finance, Nanjing Audit University, 86 West Yushan Road, Pukou District, Nanjing, 211815, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of China

    Langchuan Peng

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  1. Dong Zhou
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Correspondence to Langchuan Peng.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 6, 7, 8 and 9.

Table 6 Descriptive statistics
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Table 7 Robustness with indicator measures
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Table 8 Heterogeneous effects across subsamples
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Table 9 Average marginal effects
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Zhou, D., Peng, L. The Relationship Between the Gender Gap in Subjective Well-Being and Leisure Activities in China. J Happiness Stud 19, 2139–2166 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-017-9913-7

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