Household health expenditure does not improve people's subjective well-being in China

Introduction

Household health expenditure plays a crucial role in the daily spending of individuals. Meanwhile, the attention of the public to subjective well-being (SWB) is constantly increasing in China. Household health expenditure could reduce real family income, harming personal SWB. However, the aim of household health expenditure is to improve the physical condition of an individual, and improvements in individual health could enhance personal SWB. Therefore, the effect of household health expenditure on personal SWB is uncertain; hence, it is essential to assess the effects of household health expenditure on the SWB of Chinese residents.

Methods

The Chinese family panel studies database from 2016 to 2020 was applied in this study. A fixed effects model was used to examine the impact of household medical and health protection expenses on personal SWB. Fixed effects instrumental variable regression and propensity score matching were then used to conduct robustness testing.

Results

On the basis of a fixed effects model, it was found that household medical and health protection expenditure did not improve the happiness and life satisfaction of individuals; rather, household health protection expenditure could significantly reduce personal happiness. Fixed effects instrumental variable regression and propensity score matching analysis supported these results. Household health protection expenditure had a greater negative impact on the happiness and life satisfaction of females compared with males.

Conclusion

Household health expenditure does not improve the SWB of individuals in China; this has certain significance for the formulation of relevant policies.

How individuals perceive their partner's relationship behaviors when worrying about finances

What role do financial worries play in close relationship functioning? In this research, we examine how financial worry - negative thoughts and feelings about finances - is associated with perceived relationship behaviors. Participants recalled how their partner acted during a recent disagreement (Study 1, N = 97 couples) or recalled the frequency of positive and negative behaviors enacted by their partner during the previous week (Study 2, N = 99 couples). Feeling more worried about finances was associated with recalling less supportive behavior from one's partner at the disagreement (Study 1) and with perceiving more negative behaviors from one's partner in the last week (Study 2). Truth and Bias Model analyses suggest that part of this link may be attributed to biased perceptions, as the link between financial worry and perceiving more negative behaviors persisted even after controlling for participants' own reported behaviors (i.e., accounting for similarity) and for their partner's own reported behaviors (i.e., accounting for accurate perceptions). In sum, financial worry is linked to how partners notice and interpret a loved one's actions within their relationship.

Whose unemployment hurts more? Joblessness and subjective well-being in U.S. married couples

While heterosexually married women's labor force participation has increased, their careers may still take a back seat to their husbands' careers. This article examines the effects of unemployment on the subjective well-being of husbands and wives in the U.S., including effects of one spouse's unemployment on the other spouse's well-being. I use 21st century longitudinal data with well-validated measures of subjective well-being capturing negative affect (psychological distress) and cognitive well-being (life satisfaction). Consistent with theories of gender deviation, the results of this analysis indicate that men's unemployment negatively affects their wives' affective and cognitive well-being, but women's unemployment has no significant effects on their husbands' well-being. Additionally, own unemployment has a larger negative effect on men's than on women's subjective well-being. These findings indicate that the male breadwinner model and its associated conditionings continue to shape men's and women's subjective, internal responses to unemployment.

Earning Too Little And Worrying Too Much: The Role Of Income And Financial Worries On Parents' Well-Being In Hong Kong And Bangkok

Research has shown that financial worries are key determinants of parents' well-being. However, less is known about the relative role of income and financial worries on parents' well-being; especially from a cross-cultural perspective. Guided by need and aspiration theories, we examined the roles of income and financial worries on happiness and distress among parents from Hong Kong (N = 258) and Bangkok (N = 190). Bayesian structural equation modelling revealed that greater income and lower financial worries were correlated, on a bivariate level, with higher levels of happiness and lower levels of distress in both societies. However, regressing happiness on both income and financial worries shows that income is uniquely associated with happiness in Bangkok, but not in Hong Kong. Financial worries uniquely explained variance in distress in both societies. These findings suggest that income and financial worries play different roles in parents' psychological well-being in the two cities. To promote parents' well-being, future policy or intervention programs should target financial worries in Hong Kong. Targeting income and financial worries are more likely to be efficacious in Bangkok.

Does Money Buy Happiness? Disentangling the Association Between Income, Happiness and Stress

Although there is evidence of an inverse relationship between stress and happiness, less is known about the interrelationship between income, happiness and stress. The purpose of this research brief was to investigate whether and how income and stress shape the distribution of happiness. A population-based cross-sectional study was conducted in the city of Rio Grande, Southern Brazil, with 1,168 individuals aged 18 years or older. The data were collected in 2016 and analyzed in 2019. Wealthiest people tended to be happier and less stressed. Less-stressed people had higher levels of happiness, which remain stable regardless of their income. Most-stressed individuals had lower prevalence of happiness throughout all income subgroups. Happiness levels among both rich and poor respondents decreased as stress levels increased. Nonetheless, this reduction was more pronounced among the poorest respondents. Concluding, stress plays an important role in the relationship between income and happiness. Although there is some evidence that money can exert influence on happiness, it seems that this association is highly dependent of individuals' stress levels.

Money Does Not Always Buy Happiness, but Are Richer People Less Happy in Their Daily Lives? It Depends on How You Analyze Income

Do people who have more money feel happier during their daily activities? Some prior research has found no relationship between income and daily happiness when treating income as a continuous variable in OLS regressions, although results differ between studies. We re-analyzed existing data from the United States and Germany, treating household income as a categorical variable and using lowess and spline regressions to explore nonlinearities. Our analyses reveal that these methodological decisions change the results and conclusions about the relationship between income and happiness. In American and German diary data from 2010 to 2015, results for the continuous treatment of income showed a null relationship with happiness, whereas the categorization of income showed that some of those with higher incomes reported feeling less happy than some of those with lower incomes. Lowess and spline regressions suggested null results overall, and there was no evidence of a relationship between income and happiness in Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM) data. Not all analytic approaches generate the same results, which may contribute to explaining discrepant results in existing studies about the correlates of happiness. Future research should be explicit about their approaches to measuring and analyzing income when studying its relationship with subjective well-being, ideally testing different approaches, and making conclusions based on the pattern of results across approaches.

Modeling the effects of physical activity, education, health, and subjective wealth on happiness based on Indonesian national survey data

BACKGROUND

Studies on physical activity's psychological benefits are generally fewer than those on its physiological benefits, and these limited studies have mostly investigated its impact on cognitive functions. Studies exclusively investigating physical activity's effects on happiness are rare. This study aims to investigate the effect of physical activity on psychological functions, especially on happiness.

METHODS

Analysis was based on a large field of nationally representative Indonesian adult data. Data were compiled based on face-to-face interviews with 12,051 adults. Participants provided measures of physical activity, subjective health, and happiness, and responses were recorded with computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) software. Demographic data, including gender, subjective wealth, education, and age, were also included in the analysis. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to determine the relationship between physical activity, health, subjective wealth, and happiness.

RESULTS

The tested model of the association between physical activity, health, subjective wealth, and happiness indicated a good fit, based on χ² (1, n = 12,051) = 48.733, p = .001, RMSEA = .063, and CFI = .97. Path analysis results showed that health conditions mediated the effects of physical activity on happiness. The result also showed positive effects of education level and subjective wealth on happiness.

CONCLUSION

This study provides evidence that engagement in physical activity has a positive impact on happiness. Indonesian adults should engage in more active lifestyles since more than one-third of Indonesians did not get enough physical activity.

The Sharp Spikes of Poverty: Financial Scarcity Is Related to Higher Levels of Distress Intensity in Daily Life

Although income is an important predictor of life satisfaction, the precise forces that drive this relationship remain unclear. We propose that financial resources afford individuals a path to reducing the distressing impact of everyday hassles, thereby increasing one’s life satisfaction. More specifically, we hypothesize that financial scarcity is associated with greater distress intensity in everyday life. Furthermore, we propose that lower perceived control helps explain why financial scarcity predicts higher distress intensity and lower life satisfaction. We provide evidence for these hypotheses in a 30-day daily diary study (522 participants, 13,733 observations). A second study ( N = 376) further suggests that, although everyone relies on social support to ease stress, financial scarcity shrinks the sense one can use economic resources to reduce the adverse impact of daily hassles. Although money may not necessarily buy happiness, it reduces the intensity of stressors experienced in daily life—and thereby increases life satisfaction.

Experienced well-being rises with income, even above $75,000 per year

Past research has found that experienced well-being does not increase above incomes of $75,000/y. This finding has been the focus of substantial attention from researchers and the general public, yet is based on a dataset with a measure of experienced well-being that may or may not be indicative of actual emotional experience (retrospective, dichotomous reports). Here, over one million real-time reports of experienced well-being from a large US sample show evidence that experienced well-being rises linearly with log income, with an equally steep slope above $80,000 as below it. This suggests that higher incomes may still have potential to improve people’s day-to-day well-being, rather than having already reached a plateau for many people in wealthy countries.

What is the relationship between money and well-being? Research distinguishes between two forms of well-being: people’s feelings during the moments of life (experienced well-being) and people’s evaluation of their lives when they pause and reflect (evaluative well-being). Drawing on 1,725,994 experience-sampling reports from 33,391 employed US adults, the present results show that both experienced and evaluative well-being increased linearly with log(income), with an equally steep slope for higher earners as for lower earners. There was no evidence for an experienced well-being plateau above $75,000/y, contrary to some influential past research. There was also no evidence of an income threshold at which experienced and evaluative well-being diverged, suggesting that higher incomes are associated with both feeling better day-to-day and being more satisfied with life overall.

Socioeconomic Status and Intimate Relationships

The ways that couples form and manage their intimate relationships at higher and lower levels of socioeconomic status (SES) have been diverging steadily over the past several decades. At higher SES levels, couples postpone marriage and childbirth to invest in education and careers, but they eventually marry at high rates and have relatively low risk for divorce. At lower SES levels, couples are more likely to cohabit and give birth prior to marriage and less likely to marry at all. This review examines how SES comes to be associated with the formation, development, and dissolution of intimate relationships. Overall, research has highlighted how a couple's socioeconomic context facilitates some choices and constrains others, resulting in different capacities for relationship maintenance and different adaptive mating strategies for more and less advantaged couples. A generalizable relationship science requires research that acknowledges these differences and one that recruits, describes, and attends to socioeconomic diversity across couples.

Money: An Integrated Review and Synthesis From a Psychological Perspective

Many empirical studies have demonstrated the psychological effects of various aspects of money, including the aspiration for money, mere thoughts about money, possession of money, and placement of people in economic contexts. Although multiple aspects of money and varied methodologies have been focused on and implemented, the underlying mechanisms of the empirical findings from these seemingly isolated areas significantly overlap. In this article, we operationalize money as a broad concept and take a novel approach by providing an integrated review of the literature and identifying five major streams of mechanisms: (a) self-focused behavior; (b) inhibited other-oriented behavior; (c) favoring of a self–other distinction; (d) money’s relationship with self-esteem and self-efficacy; and (e) goal pursuit, objectification, outcome maximization, and unethicality. Moreover, we propose a unified psychological perspective for the future—money as an embodiment of social distinction—which could potentially account for past findings and generate future work.

Distributional Regression Techniques in Socioeconomic Research on the Inequality of Health with an Application on the Relationship between Mental Health and Income

This study addresses the much-discussed issue of the relationship between health and income. In particular, it focuses on the relation between mental health and household income by using generalized additive models of location, scale and shape and thus employing a distributional perspective. Furthermore, this study aims to give guidelines to applied researchers interested in taking a distributional perspective on health inequalities. In our analysis we use cross-sectional data of the German socioeconomic Panel (SOEP). We find that when not only looking at the expected mental health score of an individual but also at other distributional aspects, like the risk of moderate and severe mental illness, that the relationship between income and mental health is much more pronounced. We thus show that taking a distributional perspective, can add to and indeed enrich the mostly mean-based assessment of existent health inequalities.

Buying Happiness in an Unequal World: Rank of Income More Strongly Predicts Well-Being in More Unequal Countries

Does income rank matter more for well-being in more unequal countries? Using more than 160,000 observations from 24 countries worldwide, we replicate previous studies and show that the ranked position of an individual's income strongly predicts life evaluation and positive daily emotional experiences, whereas absolute and reference income generally have weak or no effects. Furthermore, we find the association between income rank and an individual's well-being to be significantly larger in countries where income inequality, represented by the share of taxable income held by the top 1% of income earners, is high. These results are robust to using an alternative measure of income inequality and different reference group specifications. Our findings suggest that people in more unequal societies place greater weight on the pursuit of higher income ranks, which may contribute to enduring income inequality in places where greater well-being can be bought from moving up the income ladder.

Power leads to action because it releases the psychological brakes on action

Why does power lead to action? Theories of power suggest it leads to action because it presses the psychological gas pedal. A review of two decades of research finds, instead, that power releases the psychological brakes on action. Power releases the psychological brakes on action by making failure seem less probable and feel less painful, thereby decreasing the downside risks of action. Power releases the psychological brakes on action by shrouding the feelings and thoughts of others, thereby diminishing the perceived social costs of action. Power releases the psychological brakes on action by limiting goal-inhibiting distractions, thereby promoting greater goal focus and focusing the mind on action. By removing these psychological barriers to action, power leads to action.

Time Use and Happiness of Millionaires: Evidence From the Netherlands

How do the very wealthy spend their time, and how does time use relate to well-being? In two studies in the Netherlands, the affluent ( N = 863; N = 690) and the general population ( N = 1,232; N = 306) spent time in surprisingly similar ways such as by spending the same amount of time working. Yet the nature of their time use differed in critical ways that are related to life satisfaction. In Study 1, millionaires spent more time engaged in active leisure (e.g., exercising and volunteering) rather than passive leisure (e.g., watching television and relaxing). In Study 2, millionaires spent more time engaged in tasks at work over which they had more control. The affluent sample belongs to the top of the income and wealth distribution, representing a significantly wealthier sample than in previous studies. These results further our understanding of when and how wealth may translate into greater well-being. All materials for this article are available at https://osf.io/vndmt/

Experiential wellbeing data from the American Time Use Survey: Comparisons with other methods and analytic illustrations with age and income

There has been a recent upsurge of interest in self-reported measures of wellbeing by official statisticians and by researchers in the social sciences. This paper considers data from a wellbeing supplement to the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which parsed the previous day into episodes. Respondents provided ratings of five experiential wellbeing adjectives (happiness, stress, tiredness, sadness, and pain) for each of three randomly selected episodes. Because the ATUS Well-being module has not received very much attention, in this paper we provide the reader with details about the features of these data and our approach to analyzing the data (e.g., weighting considerations), and then illustrate the applicability of these data to current issues. Specifically, we examine the association of age and income with all of the experiential wellbeing adjective in the ATUS. Results from the ATUS wellbeing module were broadly consistent with earlier findings on age, but did not confirm all earlier findings between income and wellbeing. We conclude that the ATUS, with its measurement of time use, specific activities, and hedonic experience in a nationally representative survey, offers a unique opportunity to incorporate time use into the burgeoning field of wellbeing research.

Wealth, justice and freedom: Objective and subjective measures predicting poor mental health in a study across eight countries

BACKGROUND

Macro-level factors (MF) such as wealth, justice and freedom measured with objective country-level indicators (objective MF), for instance the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), have been investigated in relation to health and well-being, but rarely in connection with depression, anxiety and stress subsumed as poor mental health. Also, a combination of different objective MF and of how individuals perceive those MF (subjective MF) has not been taken into consideration. In the present study, we combined subjective and objective measures of wealth, justice and freedom and examined their relationship with poor mental health.

METHOD

Population-based interviews were conducted in France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, U.K. and U.S.A. (n ≈ 1000 per country). GDP, GINI coefficient, Justice Index and Freedom Index were used as objective MF, whereas subjective MF were perceived wealth, justice and freedom measured at the individual level. Poor mental health was assessed as a combination of symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress.

RESULTS

In a random-intercept-model, GINI coefficient and Freedom Index were significant positive country-level, and perceived wealth, justice, and freedom significant negative individual-level predictors of symptoms of poor mental health.

CONCLUSION

Multiple subjective and objective MF should be combined to assess the macrosystem's relationship with poor mental health more precisely. The relationship between MF and poor mental health indicates that the macrosystem should be taken into account as relevant context for mental health problems, too.

The Relation Between Financial Incentives, Motivation, and Performance

Abstract. To this day, researchers are debating the adequacy of using financial incentives to bolster performance in work settings. Our goal was to contribute to current understanding by considering the moderating role of distributive justice in the relation between financial incentives, motivation, and performance. Based on self-determination theory, we hypothesized that when bonuses are fairly distributed, using financial incentives makes employees feel more competent and autonomous, which in turn fosters greater autonomous motivation and lower controlled motivation, and better work performance. Results from path analyses in three samples supported our hypotheses, suggesting that the effect of financial incentives is contextual, and that compensation plans using financial incentives and bonuses can be effective when properly managed.

Income reliably predicts daily sadness, but not happiness: A replication and extension of Kushlev, Dunn, & Lucas (2015)

Kushlev, Dunn, and Lucas (2015) found that income predicts less daily sadness-but not greater happiness-among Americans. The present study used longitudinal data from an approximately representative German sample to replicate and extend these findings. Our results largely replicated Kushlev and colleagues': income predicted less daily sadness (albeit with a smaller effect size), but was unrelated to happiness. Moreover, the association between income and sadness could not be explained by demographics, stress, or daily time-use. Extending Kushlev and colleagues' findings, new analyses indicated that only between-persons variance in income (but not within-persons variance) predicted daily sadness-perhaps because there was relatively little within-persons variance in income. Finally, income predicted less daily sadness and worry, but not less anger or frustration-potentially suggesting that income predicts less "internalizing" but not less "externalizing" negative emotions. Together, our study and Kushlev and colleagues' provide evidence that income robustly predicts select daily negative emotions-but not positive ones.

The Measure Matters: An Investigation of Evaluative and Experience-Based Measures of Wellbeing in Time Use Data

Measures of subjective wellbeing (SWB) are used to understand how people think and feel about their lives and experiences. But the measure used matters to conclusions about how well people's lives are going. This research compares life evaluations and experienced SWB using nationally representative time use diaries, advancing previous research because diaries are less subject to recall biases than other, more popular methods. Analyses of over 20,000 US residents in 2012-2013 show life evaluations are more closely associated with positive and negative affect than experienced meaningfulness. Women have higher SWB than men except for negative affect, older age groups have higher SWB than middle age groups except for experienced meaningfulness, and younger age groups report the lowest experienced meaning. The unemployed have low life evaluations but experiences of SWB are similar across employment groups. A complete picture of SWB requires a complete set of measures.

Poor but Happy? Income, Happiness, and Experienced and Expected Meaning in Life

Three studies demonstrate that income is positively associated with meaning in life (MIL) and that this relationship is moderated by positive affect (PA). Moreover, people’s forecasts about these associations resemble the actual data. Study 1 (N = 1,666) used a nationally representative sample to demonstrate that PA moderates the effect of income on MIL. At high levels of PA, income was unrelated to MIL, but at low PA, income was positively associated with MIL. Study 2 (N = 203) provided experimental support for the interaction between income and PA interaction using a PA induction. Although income predicted MIL in the control condition, it was unrelated to MIL following a PA induction. Study 3 (N = 277) demonstrated that people forecast their future lives will be more meaningful if they are wealthy versus poor, which was especially true among people who expect to be unhappy.

Control and the “Good Life”

How does a sense of control relate to well-being? We consider two distinguishable control strategies, primary and secondary control, and their relationships with two facets of subjective well-being, daily positive/negative affective experience and global life satisfaction. Using undergraduate and online samples, the results suggest that these different control strategies are associated uniquely with distinct facets of well-being. After controlling for shared variance among constructs, primary control (the tendency to achieve mastery over circumstances via goal striving) was associated more consistently with daily affective experience than was secondary control, and secondary control (the tendency to achieve mastery over circumstances via sense-making) was associated more strongly with life satisfaction than primary control, but only within the student sample and community members not in a committed relationship. The results highlight the importance of both control strategies to everyday health and provide insights into the mechanisms underlying the relationship between control and well-being.