| Relative to utility in classical economics, happiness is considered as a more final and significant goal. To fulfill people’s desire, enhancing citizens’happiness has become a major objective for some administrations, including the central government and many local governments of China. Economists focused on happiness issues again from the1970s, and many literatures sprung up from then on. Important progresses have been made, but major of them center on analyzing what factors influence happiness and how. Correspondingly, concepts are misused. We attribute this phenomenon to the lack of fundamental theory in happiness studies. Accordingly, it is hard to answer the question that which factors influence happiness mainly.In this paper, we explore the essential connotation of happiness through analyzing the concept of utility which is relative to happiness. We find that many classical economists regarded utility as measurable and comparable, such as Bentham, who was a representative of utilitarianism. So, in their opinion, utility contains happiness. However, since about1930s, the ordinal utility theory almost replaced the cardinal utility theory. Many reasons are responsible for this process, including measurement difficulties of utility in cardinality, the impulsion of pursuing scientific status for economics, mainstream views on "science" during that time, the development stage of psychology and other disciplines, ordinal utility’s ability in deriving the law of demand, the Pareto criterion for welfare judgments can avoid interpersonal comparison in utility. During this process, utility lost the meaning of happiness gradually. The theory of revealed preference intrinsically insists on ordinal utility theory, and developed it into a further stage:behaviors reveal preference, and then preference is applied to interpret the behaviors. The utility becomes another expression of preference order, thus it lost the classical sense of description happiness level.The analysis paradigm can be summarized as optimization under specific constraint conditions. It assumes that people could expect the utility of alternative options, and people make decision to maximize their expected utility. In fact, expected utility is unknown, so, selections is the merely basis to infer and calculate the expected utility. We call this meaning of utility "decision utility". Contrast to decision utility, there is another meaning of utility, which is experienced from objective conditions. We call this meaning of utility "experienced utility". As the forefront of modern economic theories, some experiments in behavioral economics help us to distinguish experienced utility and decision utility. In fact, they are not identical but different.On the one hand, experienced utility is inheritance on classical utility, that is, it renews happiness including utility. On the other hand, it also develops the utility concept, that is, utility in classical economics mixes decision utility and experienced utility, and neoclassical economics regard utility as decision utility only. So, a more all-sided and scientific utility includes decision utility and experienced utility. We explore that happiness is experienced utility, and is feelings of people about objective conditions, which is realistic, comprehensive and stable. Because happiness is experienced utility, relative to traditional variables such as the absolute value of income or consumption, naturally, it is determined mainly by some "soft variables" such as income exception, income variation, income gap, which influence our psychological feelings directly. The above theory is necessary basis for happiness studies.Based on the argument that self-reported happiness is suitable for measuring happiness level, we test the theory above. Using the data from China General Social Survey(CGSS,2006), and applying Ordered Probit model, we find that the positive influence of income on happiness is not always significant, while expected income, income while income exception, income variation, income gap have more important and stable effect on happiness. The result sufficiently supports our happiness theory above.Based on happiness theory above, we applied two types of empirical studies as follows:Firstly, we analyze the happiness of people of arriving at city and its determination. We think pregnant urbanization doesn’t lie in the extension of city area or the increase of the number of people who live in cities. Howerve, it lies in people arrival city becoming happier. As a starting point, we explore what kind of urbanization could make people arrival city become happier. Combined with the process of urbanization in our country, we divide factors into two kinds. The first includes factors influencing people migrating between city and village. The second includes factors influencing people settling down city. The second kind factors influence our psychological feelings directly. Based upon CHIPS (2002) data, applying with binary choice model, we find that the influence of income, employment status, provision of house, land and the opportunity cost of arriving at city on happiness is not stable, however, whether entitled to equal pay for equal work, social discrimination, years of life in the city, income expectation before going into the city, the social status of the family’s living standard, income exception, whether planning to quit, and migration pattern have more important influence on happiness, and also the influence is significant. Further research finds that with regard to higher age groups and lower age groups, the groups still having land in rural areas and the groups no longer having land, the effect of explanatory variables on happiness is heterogeneous.Secondly, based on the fact that the growing trend of China’s aging population, the living pattern of parents living apart from their children becoming increasingly common and the fact that family assumes multiple functions, we make empirical research on the happiness of the elderly. Using ordered probit model, based on CGSS (2006), we find that, the frequency of children’s financial support and emotional communication both have positive effect on the happiness of the elderly, but the former was not significant and the latter is significant. This supports happiness theory further. Further research shows that the wrinkly and the elderly are increasingly able to accept the living model of parent-child living apart from; as opposed to face-to-face contact between parents and frequency of non-face-to-face contact frequency have a significant positive impact on the happiness of the wrinkly and the elderly.At the end of this article, we discuss the Government to enhance the happiness of residents in the responsibilities, roles, and specific measures. Combined with empirical research, in order to make the rural migrants happier in urban than in rural, in addition to create jobs, improve the level of income, provide house, more importantly, we should start from affecting psychological feelings. Specifically, the following measures can be used:to supply them equal rights, to eliminate social discrimination, to enhance the urban sense of belonging and self-identity, to guide them to from rational expectations and try to make their exceptions fulfilled, to improve their social status, avoiding to falling into disadvantaged group, to enhance its human capital to form a good income expectation, to meet its self-development needs and to create the conditions in education, medical care, etc. to make their family can migrant entirely. Also, policies should be different for people with different age and different land endowment.In order to enhance the happiness of the wrinkly and elderly, in addition to provide necessary financial support, children should actively give their parents emotional communication; community should actively care for the wrinkly and elderly. When face-to-face contact is more difficult in the mode of living separately between the parents and their children, the non-face-to-face contact also helps to improve the happiness of the wrinkly and the elderly. |
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