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Happy life expectancy in China

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Abstract

Utilizing multiple-wave data from Chinese General Social Survey and the life table method, this study assesses the happy life expectancy of Chinese population aged 18 and older over 2005–2015. We also use the decomposition method to further isolate the happiness effect and mortality effect on temporal changes and gender differences. The results suggest that, Chinese adults, in general, live a great proportion of their lives happily, and the happy life expectancy increases pronouncedly over time in both absolute and relative terms. A rapidly rising level of happiness provides the major contribution to the temporal increase in happy life expectancy. Women exceed men in the length of happy life expectancy, and the gender difference enlarges over time. This gender gap in happy life expectancy mainly reflects a mortality effect. The results also indicate that with the increase of age, there is an increasing proportion of happy life years lived among the Chinese elderly, which is in sharp contrast with the decreasing proportion of healthy life years lived by this population, as suggested by previous studies on health life expectancy. We conclude that a combination of healthy life expectancy and happy life expectancy can provide a fuller and more comprehensive reflection on people’s overall quality of life.

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Notes

  1. Happy life expectancy is the average number of years after birth (or a certain age of x) that one could be expected to live in happiness under the given age-specific mortality rates and prevalence of happiness. It's mostly calculated using the period life table, a hypothetical cohort method.

  2. Still, according to Yang (2008), this method misused the Sullivan method. The problems are manifested in three aspects: (1) the average happiness score is not equal to the prevalence of happiness; (2) the average life expectancy at birth and happiness scores of adults is used to calculate happy life expectancy, making age-specific analysis difficult. The underlying hypothesis that there are no age differences in happiness levels is inconsistent with the results of a large number of empirical studies; (3) the estimation process is based on average life expectancy rather than key life table parameters, such as person-years, etc., which could lead to implicit bias.

  3. The CGSS survey includes a sample of adults aged 18 and older. For more information about CGSS, please visit the following website: http://www.chinagss.org.

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Funding

Funding was provided by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and Research Funds of Renmin University of China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Population and Development Studies, Renmin University of China, No. 59 Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing, 100872, China

    Yuanyuan Duan & Wei Chen

  2. Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University, Balaclava Road, North Ryde, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia

    Yuanyuan Duan

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  1. Yuanyuan Duan
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Correspondence to Yuanyuan Duan.

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Duan, Y., Chen, W. Happy life expectancy in China. China popul. dev. stud. 3, 218–236 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42379-020-00046-6

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