Jiang Junfeng
School of Sociology, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Aug 1;13:903398. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.903398. eCollection 2022.
Previous studies have documented a positive association between college education and happiness. However, the endogeneity of college education attainment is rarely examined, and a more robust link between college education and happiness needs to be built. Based on the Chinese General Social Survey data of 2017, the present study used the quasi-experiment of China's higher education expansion started in 1999 to construct a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to examine the causal association between college education and happiness. It is observed that college education indeed improved Chinese happiness, but this positive association was stronger in males than in females. Further, college education was observed to improve happiness by improving individual political status, perceived personal status, health and family social status, but not by increasing personal income. Accordingly, the government should continue to promote the development of higher education, and the fairness of higher education development deserves more attention to reduce population disparities in happiness.
以往的研究记录了大学教育与幸福感之间的正相关关系。然而，大学教育获得的内生性很少被检验，需要建立大学教育与幸福感之间更强有力的联系。基于2017年中国综合社会调查数据，本研究利用始于1999年的中国高等教育扩招这一准实验构建模糊回归断点设计，以检验大学教育与幸福感之间的因果关系。研究发现，大学教育确实提高了中国人的幸福感，但这种正相关关系在男性中比在女性中更强。此外，研究发现大学教育通过提高个人政治地位、感知到的个人地位、健康状况和家庭社会地位来提升幸福感，而不是通过增加个人收入。因此，政府应继续推动高等教育发展，高等教育发展的公平性更值得关注，以减少人群在幸福感上的差异。
