{"title":"Family life and Chinese adults’ happiness across the life span","authors":"Jiashu Xu, Airan Liu","doi":"10.1177/2057150X211045484","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"An individual's happiness is closely related to their family life as the family is the institution in which they spend most of their life. Capitalizing on data from the 2018 China Family Panel Studies, this study investigates the relationship between family economic standing (measured by household income and homeownership) and family processes (measured by marital status and childlessness), as well as children's characteristics (measured by gender composition of children and adult children's educational attainment and marital status), and happiness of Chinese adults. We take a life-course perspective and examine how such relationships vary across different life stages. We find that factors like household income and homeownership are positively related to happiness for people in general; that married adults are happier than those who are unmarried; childlessness results in decreased individual happiness in old age; adult children's educational attainment, measured by college degree (three-year and four-year) and above, improves parents’ happiness; while children's unmarried status makes parents less happy. These significant relationships also change across the life span.","PeriodicalId":37302,"journal":{"name":"社会","volume":"7 1","pages":"514 - 534"},"PeriodicalIF":1.4000,"publicationDate":"2021-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"社会","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2057150X211045484","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
An individual's happiness is closely related to their family life as the family is the institution in which they spend most of their life. Capitalizing on data from the 2018 China Family Panel Studies, this study investigates the relationship between family economic standing (measured by household income and homeownership) and family processes (measured by marital status and childlessness), as well as children's characteristics (measured by gender composition of children and adult children's educational attainment and marital status), and happiness of Chinese adults. We take a life-course perspective and examine how such relationships vary across different life stages. We find that factors like household income and homeownership are positively related to happiness for people in general; that married adults are happier than those who are unmarried; childlessness results in decreased individual happiness in old age; adult children's educational attainment, measured by college degree (three-year and four-year) and above, improves parents’ happiness; while children's unmarried status makes parents less happy. These significant relationships also change across the life span.
期刊介绍:
The Chinese Journal of Sociology is a peer reviewed, international journal with the following standards: 1. The purpose of the Journal is to publish (in the English language) articles, reviews and scholarly comment which have been judged worthy of publication by appropriate specialists and accepted by the University on studies relating to sociology. 2. The Journal will be international in the sense that it will seek, wherever possible, to publish material from authors with an international reputation and articles that are of interest to an international audience. 3. In pursuit of the above the journal shall: (i) draw on and include high quality work from the international community . The Journal shall include work representing the major areas of interest in sociology. (ii) avoid bias in favour of the interests of particular schools or directions of research or particular political or narrow disciplinary objectives to the exclusion of others; (iii) ensure that articles are written in a terminology and style which makes them intelligible, not merely within the context of a particular discipline or abstract mode, but across the domain of relevant disciplines.