A Richer China Isn't Happier, and That Spells Trouble

In the early 80s, Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader credited with setting China on the path to capitalism, may or may not have said “to get rich is glorious.” But he didn’t say anything about happiness.

A new study, led by Richard Easterlin, a professor of economics at the University of Southern California, shows that despite a rate of economic growth that is unmatched in human history, Chinese people are less happy overall than they were two decades ago.

In 1990, at the start of China’s economic transformation and a year after the events on Tiananmen Square, a large majority of Chinese people across age, education, income levels, and provinces reported high levels of satisfaction with their lives. Sixty-eight percent of those in the wealthiest income bracket and 65 percent of those in the poorest income bracket reported high levels of satisfaction in 1990.

Fast forward 20 years, and the data seem to show that life satisfaction has remained constant for middle-class Chinese, and fallen dramatically among the poorest citizens.

“There are many who believe that well-being is increased by economic growth, and that the faster the growth, the happier people are. There could hardly be a better country than China to test these expectations,” Easterlin said. “But there is no evidence of a marked increase in life satisfaction in China of the magnitude that might have been expected due to the enormous multiplication in per capita consumption. Indeed people are slightly less happy overall, and China has gone from being one of the most egalitarian countries in the world in terms of life satisfaction to one of the least.”

There’s no definite proof, but the results look as close to a popular referendum as you can find of the government, which has been unable to calm fears about unemployment and the erosion of the social safety net. That erosion looks especially nerve-wracking at a time when record numbers of old people are entering retirement, while their children are increasingly living in cities, away from their parents and, due to the one child policy, without siblings to help take care of their parents.

Inequality probably plays a role too. Along with a yawning wealth gap, Chinese citizens are used to a system seeded by corruption. Examples abound, but the best catchword for now is Bo Xilai, the ousted Chongqing mayor who is said to have secretly sent billions of dollars overseas, engineered dirty real estate deals, and relied on murder even while he promoted the virtues of Communism.

The study’s surveys did not document any reasons for a decline in happiness, but life at home, the need for work, health, friends and relatives are possible culprits, its authors note. And it is a well-known phenomenon, says Easterlin, that “growth in aspirations induced by rising income undercuts the increase in life satisfaction related to rising income itself.”

There are reasons to be skeptical about this study. Easterlin is the creator of so-called “happiness economics,” and even if it’s growing in popularity, the happiness field is still new, and its data is still limited. The decline in happiness among the poorest was also attributed to a lack of respondents. And some studies suggest that there is actually a good correlation between money and happiness.

But similar trends have been seen in the former USSR and East Germany during their own periods of transition. And the idea that money doesn’t buy happiness has been evidenced in places like Bhutan, which bases social progress on an index of gross national happiness — at term coined in 1972 by Bhutan’s fourth Dragon King (!), Jigme Singye Wangchuck — rather than GDP.

Of course, it would be “a mistake to conclude from the life satisfaction experience of China, and the transition countries more generally, that a return to socialism and the gross inefficiencies of central planning would be beneficial.” Better idea: remember that “jobs and job and income security, together with a social safety net, are of critical importance to life satisfaction.”

The stakes are heavy and personal. As much as 17.5 percent of China’s adult population may suffer from some mental illness, according to a 2009 survey published in The Lancet, while the country’s troubled mental health system is beset by taboo, political abuse (the asylum is a popular way of dealing with dissidents), and a lack of expertise (China has ten percent of the psychologists that developed countries have per capita).

One potential effect of a happiness deficit and a lack of proper treatment: China is home to one of the world’s highest suicide rates. Data from the country’s own Center for Disease Control says that China’s suicide rate has leapt 60 percent in the past 50 years, and is now four times higher than the U.S.’s. Suicide is the leading cause of death for people between the ages of 15 and 34, reports the CDC; today, someone in China commits suicide every two minutes.

And surprisingly, women, rural women in particular, are especially vulnerable: while in developed countries, male suicide rates are three times higher than female suicide rates, in China, women are about 25 percent more likely to commit suicide than men. This, despite the country’s massive gender imbalance in favor of males, the result of a bias against girls, which, science writer Mara Hvistendahl has written, comes with all sorts of obvious and not-so-obvious downsides.

All of this – coupled with the now obvious slow-down of the Chinese economy – would suggest that something’s got to give. It would be reductive to draw connections between feelings and politics, but over the time that happiness has stagnated in China, political unrest has grown too, despite every attempt by the government to delete it. Last year saw another surge in recorded demonstrations, including labor riots, a take-over of the village of Wukan by its citizens, the short-lived Arab Spring-inspired “Jasmine Revolution”, and a record number of self-immolations in Tibet.

If Deng’s tacit deal with the Chinese people — stay in line and we’ll make you rich — is broken, then all bets are off, and China’s happiness deficit endangers the government’s power, and the country’s stability. In any country, low happiness means depression and social ills. In China, where revolution and revolt has defined political progress, a happiness deficit is liable to lead to something much uglier.

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