摘要
大多数国家的经济发展经历表明,经济增长与居民幸福感之间存在着一种倒"U"形关系,即居民收入水平达到一定程度之后,人们的幸福感不仅不会上升,反而可能会下降,这就是所谓的"伊斯特林悖论"。文章利用2016年中国劳动力动态调查数据(CLDS),从收入和居民主观空气污染角度对该悖论进行了解释。首先,不同收入水平的居民对环境污染的敏感程度是不同的。收入水平越高,居民对空气污染越敏感,因此主观空气污染越严重。其次,收入水平越高,环境污染对居民幸福感的负面影响越大。这是因为不同收入水平的居民对环境的要求是不同的,高收入者对环境有更高要求;而对于低收入者来说,他们更倾向于通过经济发展提高收入水平,对经济发展带来的环境污染问题则关注不够。因此,在我国全面建成小康社会以后,在提高居民收入水平的同时,更应该关注人民群众对美好生活的追求,特别是要协调好不同收入群体对美好生活的异质性需求,从而提高我国居民的整体幸福感。
The American economist Easterlin put forward the famous "Easterlin Paradox" in a study on happiness in 1974. It is said that higher income is not systematically accompanied by greater happiness. In other words,in the early stages of economic growth,people’s happiness will increase significantly with the increase of income level;after the income growth reaches a certain level,people’s happiness may decrease with the increase of income level. Since then,many studies have explained this phenomenon from the perspective of relative income and missing variables. In the past,most countries’ development experiences have shown that sacrificing the environment in exchange for economic growth is more common in many regions. Therefore,many scholars use the environmental quality as an important factor in the theory of missing variables to explain the "Easterlin Paradox".Unlike most previous studies,this paper distinguishes air pollution from measured air pollution and perceived air pollution. Perceived air pollution is an individual’s subjective assessment of atmospheric environment. Under the same environment,different individuals may have different sensitivity to air pollution. Psychology research shows that the direct impact on people’s happiness is the subjective feeling of air pollution,that is,perceived air pollution. Based on the perspective of environmental pollution sensitivity,this paper uses the 2016 China Labor Dynamics Survey data from Sun Yat-sen University to explore the impact of income on residents’ perceived air pollution,and further analyzes the heterogeneity of residents’ perceived air pollution on happiness,providing a new possible explanation for the "Easterlin Paradox".It comes to the following conclusions:First,the sensitivity to the environmental pollution of residents at different income levels is different. High-income people are more sensitive to air pollution. Second,the higher the income level of residents,the greater the negative impact of environmental pollution on residents’ happiness. It is found through calculations that high-income people will offer higher willingness-to-pay to improve air quality,while low-income people or residents in poverty levels are even willing to sacrifice the environment in exchange for income growth.The conclusion of this paper reminds us that in the process of environmental pollution control,it should be recognized that the environmental requirements of different groups are different. It is available to improve environmental quality and increase the income of the poor at the same time if the ecological compensation mechanism between developed regions and backward regions can be rational designed,so as to realize the Pareto improvement of the welfare of the whole society.The main contributions of this paper are:(1)making a further research on happiness;(2)analyzing the subjective feelings of different income groups on air pollution and their impact on happiness,and providing a new interpretation of the "Easterlin Paradox" from the perspective of perceived air pollution;(3)effectively avoiding sample selective bias and making the results more reliable by using more comprehensive and nationally representative city-level air quality data.
作者
叶林祥
张尉
Ye Linxiang;Zhang Wei(Economics School,Nanjing University of Finance and Economics,Nanjing 210023,China;Business School,Beijing Normal University,Beijing 100875,China)
出处
《财经研究》
CSSCI
北大核心
2020年第1期126-140,共15页
Journal of Finance and Economics
基金
国家社会科学基金重大项目(19ZDA116)
江苏省研究生科研与实践创新计划项目(KYCX17_1092)
