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Objectives:This study aimed to determine the risk factors for chronic diseases and to identify the potential influencing mechanisms from the perspectives of lifestyle and dietary factors. The findings could provide updated and innovative evidence for the prevention and control of chronic diseases.Design:A cross-sectional study.Setting:Shanghai, China.Participants:1005 adults from Yangpu district of Shanghai participated in the study, and responded to questions on dietary habits, lifestyle and health status.Results:Residents suffering from chronic diseases accounted for about 34·99 % of the respondents. Logistic regression analysis showed that age, diet quality, amount of exercise and tea drinking were related to chronic diseases. Age > 60 and overeating (Diet Balance Index total score > 0) had negative additive interaction on the occurrence of chronic disease, while overexercise (Physical Activity Index > 17·1) and tea drinking had negative multiplicative interaction and negative additive interaction on the occurrence of chronic disease. Diet quality, physical activity and tea drinking were incomplete mediators of the relationship between types of medical insurance residents participating in and chronic diseases.Conclusions:The residents in Yangpu District of Shanghai have a high prevalence of chronic diseases. Strengthening access of residents to health education and interventions to prevent chronic diseases and cultivating healthy eating and exercise habits of residents are crucial. The nutritional environment of the elderly population should be considered, and the reimbursement level of different types of medical insurance should be designed reasonably to improve the accessibility of medical and health services and reduce the risk of chronic diseases.

Migrant workers greatly contributing to China’s industrialization and urbanization are confronted with increasing health risks. This study empirically investigates the effects of public employment services on the self-rated health of migrant workers in Shanghai China, by using data from the National Bureau of Statistics from 2015 to 2020. The estimation results under the Ordered Probit model illustrate that public employment services significantly improve the self-rated health of migrant workers, and vocational training, job development and other related services show an apparently positive correlation with the self-rated health. The marginal effect analysis reveals that public employment services obviously reduce the probability of health satisfaction as “average”, “relatively satisfied” and “relatively dissatisfied”, which translate into a significant increase in the probability of “very satisfied”. The mechanism analysis verifies that public employment services enhance the self-rated health by increasing the proportion of medical insurance and injury insurance of migrant workers. The results are still reliable by adopting the methods of subsample regression, Propensity Score Matching and variable substitution to conduct robustness checks. This study further enriches the literature on public employment services and the health status of migrant workers, and provides policy implications on improving the health status of migrant workers and the public employment service system of China under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yan Yang,1,2,* Ning Chen,3,* Mingwang Cheng,1 Chen Chen,4 Huining Zhou,2 Zhaoxin Wang,2 Wenya Yu,2,* Jianwei Shi5,6,* 1School of Economics & Management, Tongji University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 2School of Public Health, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 3Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 4Shanghai Jing ‘an District Jiangning Road Community Health Service Center, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 5Department of General Practice, Yangpu Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 6Department of Health Services Management, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Wenya YuSchool of Public Health, Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine, 227 South Chongqing Road, Shanghai, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail jsjyyuwenya@sina.cnJianwei ShiDepartment of General Practice, Yangpu Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, 450 Tengyue Road, Shanghai, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail shijianwei_amy@126.comBackground: With the increasing risk of infectious disease outbreaks around the world, the role of community health centres (CHCs) in the prevention and control of epidemics has become increasingly prominent. This study aimed to examine the capacities, vulnerabilities, and obstacles related to coping with infectious disease epidemics in Chinese CHCs.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Shanghai CHCs. Stratified random sampling was used to select 48 CHCs, and 2460 medical staff members responded to questionnaire surveys. ANOVA and multivariate analysis were used to evaluate the current situation and main obstacles regarding CHC medical staff members’ perceptions of their capacity to cope with infectious disease epidemics.Results: The scores for regulation awareness (mean= 3.64, SD= 0.02) and detection/reporting ability (mean= 3.66, SD= 0.02) were lower than the score for the ability to handle an epidemic (mean= 3.79, SD= 0.02). After controlling for covariates, working in a traditional Chinese medicine (β= − 0.63, P= 0.002) or medical technology department (β= − 0.60, P= 0.002), not having participated in emergency exercises (β= − 0.78, P< 0.001), and not having participated in emergency training (β= − 0.59, P= 0.01) were associated with lower scores on all three domains. Those with senior professional titles reported relatively high levels of ability to handle an epidemic (β= 0.21, P= 0.01). Female workers reported relatively low regulation awareness (β= − 0.11, P= 0.02) and detection/reporting ability (β= − 0.11, P= 0.01).Conclusion: The three emergency response abilities of CHC medical workers differed based on the medical worker’s sex, department, and title, indicating the need for targeted scientific emergency exercises and training for infectious disease outbreaks. Moreover, there is a need to improve the relevant policies and equipment.Keywords: disease outbreak, community health service centres, coping capacity, training

This study employs the Cov-AHP method to determine the weight of each indicator based on the evaluation indicator system for the differentiation level of rural households and adopts a bivariate pro...

Resident satisfaction with governmental environmental protection is of great significance to environmental governance by the Chinese government. However, the impact of internet use on resident satisfaction with governmental environmental protection is complex, and the relevant empirical evidence is far from sufficient. Based on data from the Chinese Social Survey for 2013 and using OLS and ordered probit regressions, this study finds a significant negative relationship between internet use and resident satisfaction with governmental environmental protection. Further study suggests that an increase in different online content frequencies could reduce resident satisfaction with governmental environmental protection. Nevertheless, residents who are conservative or skeptical about internet information are more satisfied with the government's environmental protection. The conclusions of this study are consistent with the "negativity bias" theory, indicating that netizens focus greater attention on negative news related to environmental protection. Finally, this paper performs two analyses to ensure the robustness of the research results. First, considering the possible "self-selection" problem, this paper conducts a robustness test using the method of propensity score matching (PSM) and finds that the results are still consistent. Second, the sample is subdivided to analyse the regional differences in the impacts of internet use on resident satisfaction with governmental environmental protection. The results show that internet use has a significant negative influence on resident satisfaction with governmental environmental protection in eastern China, central China but has no significant effect in western China. In addition, the impact of internet use on urban resident satisfaction with governmental environmental protection is significantly greater than that of rural resident.

This paper aims to explore the reliability, validity and influence of demographics on mental health measured by the mental composite scale from the World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) among Chinese urban residents. Participants were 971 young and middle-aged urban residents in six developed cities of Yangtze River Delta. Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the potential factor structure of the mental composite scale. Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to evaluate the goodness of fit of the factor structure model. And logistic regression model was conducted to analyze the demographic effect. The results showed that the mental composite scale had a satisfactory reliability and validity, and the three-factor structure model had an acceptable goodness of fit. Furthermore, it indicated that annual income was the significant indicator of mental health. Participants who had earned between RMB50,000 - RMB100,000 annually were more likely to report better mental health than those with annual income less than RMB10,000. It demonstrated therefore that the mental composite scale selected from the WHOQOL-BREF was an appropriate instrument to measure the mental health of Chinese urban residents in the Yangtze River Delta region.

The Great Chinese Famine (1959–61) claimed tens of millions of lives. However, its long-term mental health costs on those who survived remains unexamined. To address this gap, we calculate the famine intensity of prefecture-level regions across China from a rich set of death records and use its variation and data from a recent nationally representative survey to identify the long-term effects of the famine on the mental health of those in rural areas who experienced the famine in the early years of their lives. Difference-in-differences estimates revealed that a one-standard-deviation rise in the experienced famine intensity predicts a 2.3% increase in the probability of severe depressive symptoms (or about 24.8% of the mean). This roughly translates into 3.77 million cases caused by the famine, which is quite likely an undercount. The main mediating channels of this effect include starvation experience, unequal resource allocation, and toxic stress. Our findings shed new light on how large-scale food security failures may impact the mental well-being of the survivors.

Numerous studies have focused on bank ownership with a typical focus on analyzing performance issues by using data from commercial banks; however, these do not consider the link between ownership and capital adequacy. Our study fills this gap in the literature by investigating the impact of property rights reform on banks’ capital adequacy in China and heterogeneity across restructured forms of ownership, reform pathways, and time. Using data from rural credit cooperatives in China for 2008–2014, we find that rural cooperative banks have better capital adequacy than banks under two other forms of ownership. We further find that among four possible reform pathways, only restructuring from a rural cooperative bank to a rural commercial bank enhances capital adequacy significantly and that improvements in capital adequacy generally weaken over time. Further analyses indicate that this improvement is primarily attributable to capital injections and removal of non-performing assets by the government. These findings contribute to an understanding of how best to reform rural finance, particularly in developing countries.

We explored the factor structure of the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) with a sample of 523 people aged 21–44 years from 4 counties and districts in the city of Ya'an, China, who had survived the 2013 earthquake there. Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify the potential factor structure of the BAI and confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate the goodness of fit of the factor structure model. The results indicated that the BAI had satisfactory reliability and validity but that the factor structure was unstable; therefore, it was difficult to name the 4 extracted factors. However, in general, our results showed that the BAI is an appropriate instrument to use for detecting the anxiety level of earthquake survivors in China.

We examined the factor structure of the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) with 531 students at 6 universities in Nanjing to evaluate its applicability as a measure of the anxiety of Chinese postgraduates. We performed exploratory factor analysis to identify the potential factor structure of the BAI. We referred to confirmatory factor analysis models from previous studies for model fit. All 7 competing models fitted well with the students' data. The 4-factor structure proposed by Wetherell and Areán yielded the best fit. Results indicate that the BAI has satisfactory reliability and validity among Chinese postgraduates.

A growing body of research has shown that people&rsquo, s attitudes toward food safety is affected by their availability and accessibility to food risk information. In the digital era, the Internet has become the most important channel for information acquisition. However, empirical evidence related to the impact of Internet use on people&rsquo, s attitudes towards food safety is inadequate. In this study, by employing the Chinese Social Survey for 2013 and 2015, we have investigated the current situation of food safety perceptions and evaluations among Chinese residents and the association between Internet use and individuals&rsquo, food safety evaluations. Empirical results indicate that there is a significant negative correlation between Internet use and people&rsquo, s food safety evaluation in China. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis shows that Internet use has a stronger negative correlation with food safety evaluation for those lacking rational judgment regarding Internet information. Specifically, the negative correlation between Internet use and food safety evaluations is more obvious among rural residents, young people, and less educated residents. Finally, propensity score matching (PSM) is applied to conduct a robustness check. This paper provides new evidence for studies on the relationship between Internet use and an individuals&rsquo, food safety cognition, as well as additional policy enlightenment for food safety risk management in the digital age.

In today’s world, improving the efficiency of transforming ecological consumption into human well-being is a necessary condition for humanity as a whole to achieve higher levels of well-being within ecological limits. In this paper, the Index of Ecological Well-being Performance (IEWP) is defined and constructed to measure the efficiency of transforming ecological consumption into human well-being and to determine which countries are more ecologically efficient in improving human well-being. As an efficiency measure, the main mission of the IEWP is to urge and stimulate countries to improve human well-being in an ecologically efficient way. The Human Development Index (measuring human well-being) and the Ecological Footprint (measuring ecological consumption) are employed to construct the IEWP. An empirical IEWP analysis of 82 countries with a population larger than 10 million in 2012 demonstrates that the developed countries (except Romania) and the G20 countries (except India and Indonesia) are generally less ecologically efficient in improving human well-being. To make national well-being improvement not only ecologically efficient but also equitable, several suggestions are proposed regarding respective responsibilities for global ecological sustainability in the process of improving IEWP performance for countries with different ecological conditions and development stages.

This study analyzed the effects of urban governance and city size on COVID-19 prevention and control measures. Based on real-time data in 276 prefecture-level Chinese cities, we used the ordinary least squares plus robust standard error strategy. It was found that: (1) despite the non-significant effect of city size, urban governance capacity was an important factor affecting the prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic; urban governance capacity was particularly significant in the late control of the pandemic, but not significant in the early prevention; for every unit increase of urban governance capacity, the number of recovered COVID-19 cases per capita increased by 2.4%. Moreover, (2) the influence mechanism of anti-pandemic measures in cities could be divided into the workforce, financial, and material effects, and their contribution rates were 26.15%, 32.55%, and 37.20%, respectively; namely, the effective/timely assistance from Chinese central government regarding the workforce, financial, and material resources in key pandemic areas and nationwide played a major role in pandemic control. Additionally, (3) cities with a high level of smart city construction were more capable of enhancing the pandemic prevention and control effect, indicating that smart city construction is conducive to enhanced coping with public crises.

This study aims to examine the impact of smart city construction on the ecological environment quality (EEQ) of China. Due to the problems arising from urbanisation, local governments construct smart cities as inherent innovative advantages that can improve their level of science and technology, and efficiency in resource allocation, thereby reducing environmental pollution. Through this innovation-driven channel, shocks to the degree of city smartness can have a significant impact on the regional environment. In order to compute the sensitivity of urban pollution to the degree of city smartness in China both conceptually and empirically, we modify a theoretical model of classic land allocation decisions to demonstrate how local officials’ responsibilities to protect the ecological environment and promote economic growth can lead to the long-run spatial expansion of smart cities, resulting in the improvement of EEQ. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) analysis, we find that from 2005 to 2017 period, smart city initiatives in China reduced industrial exhaust gas and industrial wastewater by approximately 20.7% and 12.2%, respectively, such that most of the reduction may be attributed to the technology effect and allocation effect of urban innovation.

More and more literature have been researching subjective well-being from the perspective of natural capital. By employing a biological proxy of renewable natural capital, the Biocapacity, this paper aims to add to the growing literature by empirically estimating the relationship between renewable natural capital and subjective well-being. Based on a cross-sectional data set of 139 countries around the year 2013, the Ordinary Least Square regression estimations demonstrate that renewable natural capital has a significant positive impact on subjective well-being. A sensitivity analysis by employing another proxy of subjective well-being further certifies the significant positive relationship between renewable natural capital and subjective well-being. The respective regression estimations for the high-income countries (including 77 countries) and the low-income countries (including 62 countries) show that the relationship is also significantly positive for the high-income countries whereas statistically insignificant for the low-income countries. The empirical findings of this paper further prove that renewable natural capital serves as an independent factor in affecting and explaining national subjective well-being levels and that residents do consider the ecosystem goods and services generated from renewable natural capital when they evaluate their life conditions, especially for those who have reached a certain level of living standard.

Identifying factors that influence the public's environmental quality perception is conducive to environmental protection and risk management. By employing data from the Chinese Social Survey (CGSS) and the ordinary least squares (OLS) method, the present study aims to explore the associations between Internet use and Chinese residents' environmental quality evaluation. The results show that, compared with non-netizens, netizens have a higher negative evaluation of environmental quality, which supports the negativity bias theory, namely, that netizens pay more attention to negative news related to environmental pollution on the Internet. Further study suggests that the impact of Internet use on environmental quality evaluation is heterogeneous across different categories of environmental issues and populations: Internet use has greater effects on risk perception of environmental issues that are closely related to residents' lives. In addition, Internet use has a greater negative impact on environmental quality evaluation for older people and rural residents. Finally, this paper utilizes a substitution variable method, propensity score matching (PSM) and quantile regression to conduct the robustness check.

Marital happiness is an important symbol of social harmony and can help promote sustainable economic and social development. In recent years, the rapid rise of the divorce rate in China, a country where the divorce rate had previously been low, has attracted wide attention. However, few articles have focused on the popularization of information and communication technology's impact on China’s rising divorce rate in recent years. As a first attempt, the provincial panel data during the period 2001–2016 is applied to study quantitatively the relationship between mobile phone penetration and the divorce rate. In order to get more reliable estimation results, this paper uses two indicators to measure the divorce rate, and quantile regression is applied for further analysis. Additionally, one-year to five-year lag times of the mobile phone penetration are used as the core explanatory variables in order to analyse the lagging effect of mobile phone penetration on divorce rate. The result shows that the correlation between the mobile phone penetration and the divorce rate was statistically positive significant in China during the period 2001–2016. Furthermore, the paper also finds that mobile phone penetration had the greatest impact on divorce rate in central China, followed by eastern China, but it was not obvious in western China during this period. From a technological perspective, this paper provides some possible explanations for the rising divorce rate in China in recent years, and further enriches the relevant research on the impact of the development of information and communication technology on societal changes.

This paper studies the impact of Internet use on life satisfaction, and the channel through which this impact occurs by using data from the 2016 China Family Panel Studies. Employing seemingly unrelated regression to estimate mediation models, we find that in China, Internet use makes people significantly less satisfied with the environmental quality and their living conditions; meanwhile, the dissatisfaction in environmental quality caused by Internet use plausibly mediates the negative effect of Internet use on life satisfaction. Heterogeneity analyses confirm significant differences with regard to the urban-rural division, gender and relative income. Furthermore, the more important the Internet is for an individual's information acquisition, the less satisfied he or she feels with environmental quality and living conditions. The findings shed light on several policy-relevant issues, e.g., the relationship between Internet use and environmental activism.

China, despite its rapid economic modernization and the lack of powerful conservative institutions, is not known for embracing diverse sexual orientation. The present study investigates whether and how Internet use, a increasingly important part of contemporary people's daily life, leads to changes in people's attitudes toward homosexuality in China, and relevant policy implications. Analyzing the Chinese General Social Survey data from 2010 to 2015, this paper develops an ordered probit model to quantify the influence of Internet use on homosexuality tolerance, adopts a substitution variable method to conduct the robustness check, and utilizes instrument variables to address the potential endogeneity in the regressions. The results show that Internet use has a significant positive impact on Chinese people's homosexuality tolerance. Further studies have found that the influence of Internet use on homosexuality tolerance is also heterogeneous to different populations. Besides, compared with traditional media, the Internet has a more significant impact on homosexuality tolerance. This paper provides some explanations for the rise in China's homosexuality tolerance from 2010 to 2015, and additional impetus for the international community to push for a liberal Internet policy in China.

Sustainable economic development relies on policies that encourage pro-environmental behavior. Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey, this study investigates the impact of Internet use on individual-level pro-environmental behavior, and finds a significant positive correlation. The finding is robust against alternative statistical methods, e.g., running quantile regressions or utilizing instrumental variable method. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that Internet use has a greater impact on pro-environmental behavior for women, educated residents and urban dwellers. Internet use during working hours and using the Internet in spare time for learning activities are more conducive to improving individuals’ pro-environment behavior. This paper underscores the combination of traditional factors and information technology factors to predict pro-environmental behavior in digital era. The findings in this study are suggestive of an environmental policy of encouraging pro-environmental behavior through expanding Internet access.

Based on data from the Chinese General Social Surveys from 2012, 2013, and 2015, this paper empirically studies the impact of the Internet on sexual attitudes, using ordinary least squares regressions and ordinal logistic regressions, followed by regressions that use the instrumental variable method and propensity score matching method for causal inferences. Our results suggest that Internet-usage frequency has a significantly positive impact on sexually permissive attitudes, including attitudes toward premarital sex, extramarital sex, and homosexual behavior. For example, a regression that uses instrument variables reveals that an increase of one standard deviation for Internet-usage frequency is associated with an increase of 0.6154 standard deviations for sexually permissive attitudes. Further, through the mediation effect model, this study probes the influence of Internet usage on sexually permissive attitudes, revealing that social network and education attainment account for 2.37% and 11.09%, respectively, of the total effect. The findings bolster the common perception that the Internet plays a crucial role in the sexual revolution in China.

Using nationally representative rural household panel data from 2003 through 2007 in China, we examine economic gains of cadre status and channels through which cadre status increases household earnings. We find that income of cadre households was approximately 10 percent higher than that of non-cadre households on a per capita basis. The cadre income premium did not come from agricultural income but mainly from non-agricultural sources, especially the income from the village and the government. We also find that cadre income premiums were much larger and more significant in economically advanced regions than in less developed regions and in villages that exhibited higher income inequality than their counterparts. Furthermore, this study shows that newly elected cadre households acquired the economic gains immediately and cadre households lost the economic gains immediately when they lost their cadre status, which implies that the cadre economic gains were less likely attributable to human capital of cadres but mainly due to cadre status. Our findings provide evidence for the ongoing debate on distribution of economic gains during the process of transition in emerging market economies.

A growing body of literature explains subjective well-being (SWB) from different perspectives. The statement of &ldquo, built, human, social, and natural capital are necessary determinants of SWB&rdquo, is named the four-capital model. Based on a cross-sectional dataset in 2013, which included 3293 individuals and covered the urban areas of most provinces in China, this paper employs the four-capital model to explain individual SWB of urban China. We select individual income and household income per capita as proxies of built capital, physical health and education as proxies of human capital, social connection and social trust as proxies of social capital, and air quality as a proxy of natural capital. In the four-capital model, household income per capita and physical health have almost the same and larger positive impacts on individual SWB of urban China, social connection, social trust, and air quality have smaller and diminishing positive impacts on individual SWB of urban China, and individual income and education are statistically insignificant. The empirical results offer guidance on how to achieve human-centered urbanization for China. This paper provides insights into how to further improve human well-being of urban residents in China and the applicability of the four-capital model in explaining SWB at the individual level.