When Growth Outpaces Happiness - NYTimes.com - 1 views
www.nytimes.com/...growth-outpaces-happiness.html
china safety net social policies economic growth happiness survey research
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As the recent riots at a Foxconn factory in northern China demonstrate, growth alone, even at sustained, spectacular rates, has not produced the kind of life satisfaction crucial to a stable society — an experience that shows how critically important good jobs and a strong social safety net are to people’s happiness.
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Starting in 1990, as China moved to a free-market economy, real per-capita consumption and gross domestic product doubled, then doubled again. Most households now have at least one color TV. Refrigerators and washing machines — rare before 1990 — are common in cities.
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most policy makers would confidently predict that a fourfold increase in a people’s material living standard would make them considerably happier.
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Although the rate of layoffs dropped considerably in the early 2000s and unemployment started falling, Chinese people’s concerns about jobs and safety-net benefits persisted.
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Before free-market reforms kicked in, most urban Chinese workers enjoyed what was called an “iron rice bowl”: permanent jobs and an extensive employer-provided safety net, which included subsidized food, housing, health care, child care, pensions and jobs for grown children. Life satisfaction during this period among urban Chinese, despite their much lower levels of income, was almost as high as in the developed world.
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Yet there is no evidence that the Chinese people are, on average, any happier, according to an analysis of survey data that colleagues and I conducted. If anything, they are less satisfied than in 1990, and the burden of decreasing satisfaction has fallen hardest on the bottom third of the population in wealth. Satisfaction among Chinese in even the upper third has risen only moderately.
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Evidence of a fraying social safety net is indicated by the decline in self-reported health among the bottom third: those reporting that their health was good or very good dropped to 44 percent, compared with 54 percent in 1990.
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China’s transition has been similar in several respects to the transitions of countries in Central and Eastern Europe, for which we have similar life-satisfaction data.