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There is now recognition that a population's overall level of well-being is defined not just by income and wealth. Where we live and who we interact with are likely to be equally important in our overall levels of satisfaction with our lives. This thinking has stimulated studies of subjective well-being, or happiness, at both national and local scales. These studies suggest that where you live does matter, although it is health and family status that have the most direct effects on well-being. In this study, we use a detailed dataset on well-being from the China Household Finance Survey to reexamine well-being across China, where profound socioeconomic changes are taking place. The study controls for self-reported health and examines subjective well-being across extensive and varied Chinese urban and rural environments. We find that the earlier pessimism about China's well-being, which emphasized declining happiness, may be misplaced. We make two contributions: first, we show a rising level of subjective well-being, and second, we show that there is a narrowing gap in well-being across different social indicators. Methodologically, we bring in the perspectives of both social capital and geographic context.

Recent literature has widely discussed how housing price is linked to consumption and tenure choices, while tended to ignore that consumption and tenure choices are inter-correlated. This study employs the simultaneous equation model to explore how the housing purchase intention affects the non-housing consumption, considering the role of housing market sentiment. The result shows, on average, the housing purchase intention is associated with higher non-housing consumption, and a higher sentiment magnifies this positive relationship. Housing price level and growth decrease the household's enthusiasm of purchasing a new house, while sentiment is positively related to the housing purchase intention. Renters' behavior is less likely be affected by sentiment. In addition, the heterogeneous analysis indicates that households face a trade-off between housing and certain kinds of commodities. This study has some significant, practical implications on optimizing households' wealth allocation, implementing housing policy and improving the social welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is an ownership society, but with a paradox – many homeowners do not live in the apartments/houses they own, and instead live in rental housing. This is different from the pattern in Western economies where households own multiple properties but still live in an owned unit. The paper is situated within the literature on the financialization of housing and the changing meaning of homeownership. We examine the paradox by studying its patterns and dynamics using 2017 China Household Finance Survey data. We find that the owner-renting in China is a result of spatial, temporal and functional mismatches between housing needs. The intrinsic investment strategy and services linked to homeownership have made it imperative to own homes, regardless a household's housing needs. Young, single, better-off and split households, and those in large, expensive cities are more likely to be owners-renting. In addition, institutional barriers in the housing market such as migrant status, housing purchase limit policy, and subsidized housing encourage owner-renting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]