This article explores the impact of losing a child, especially losing all children (including losing the only child), on the mental health, happiness and loneliness of parents. The Chinese government has implemented strict restrictions on the number of births for each family since the 1970s,...

Using a difference-in-differences method with variations in birth cohorts and regional excess death rates, this study quantifies the effects of the 1959–1961 Chinese Great Famine, one of the severest public disasters in the world in the 20th century, on the subjective well-being (SWB) and...

This study examines how an important reform of local governance—village democracy—in the world’s most populous areas has affected the happiness of residents in rural China. We find that introducing elections per se has no significant impact. In comparison, direct nomination of local...

We estimate the causal effect of income on happiness using a unique dataset of Chinese twins. This allows us to address omitted variable bias and measurement errors. Our findings show that individual income has a large positive effect on happiness, with a doubling of income resulting in an...

We examine the effect of donation on the happiness of donors using the 2010 wave of the China Family Panel Study. We consider data from the Wenchuan Earthquake, which has induced a large amount of donations from all Chinese communities. We use two measures of donation behavior, namely, donations...