| With the increasing accumulation of social wealth,national happiness has aroused widespread public concern.Highlighting the importance of national happiness is a new governance concept.The ultimate goal of social development is not to maximize national wealth,but national happiness.In order to build a "happy China",a realistic problem that should be focused on is that social differentiation is obvious.Happiness comes from comparison,what matters is not what we have,but what we have while our "reference group" does not.Happiness comes from " relative success ",unhappiness from "relative deprivation".The polarization between the rich and the poor and the social inequality determine the different demands and experiences of happiness for different social strata.Therefore,how to make the achievements of reform benefit all people,especially the disadvantaged groups,to share the achievements of social development and to improve the happiness of the whole society are major social problem which must be faced and solved in order to build a "happy China".As sociologist Havighurst indicated: education will become the main way for individuals to flow upward with the progress of society.However,under the social mobility function of education,what is the situation of happiness differentiation among all strata nowadays in China?Is it "harmonious" ? Further,under the situation of highly divided society,how can all social classes and groups share happiness and realize the maximization of happiness? How to improve the subjective well-being of all strata effectively? These should be the front subjects of China’s educational sociology.Given that,this paper uses Joe Spring’s educational "Sorting Machine" for reference,and introduces Bourdieu’s field theory and Parsons’ structure-functional integration view,to construct a reasonable and self-consistent education-social field cognitive schema that characterizes the overall relevance of events.In order to reveal the systematic organic connection and internal mechanism of "heterogeneous individual’s educational choice – upward social mobility and social stratification structure – psychological expectation and realistic perception – residents’ subjective well-being",it is critical to make up for the deficiency of the isolated research on the subject of fragmented and unilateral existing literature.This paper aims to take social stratification as the key intermediate variable of how education affects happiness,and put forward a method to capture the movement of educational reference points.From the perspective of expectation adaptation,it explores how education screens different groups into corresponding occupations and social strata,and leads to the phenomenon of happiness differentiation.This paper conducts a series of models,including basic models,adjustment models and expectation adaptation models,and uses difference-in-difference（DID）method and propensity score matching（PSM）to dynamically simulate and evolve how education,social stratum and happiness drift in different situations,so as to explore the overall correlation characteristics among education,social stratum and subjective well-being,which has important theoretical and application value for how to explain and effectively improve the subjective well-being of different social strata.The main body of the essay includes five parts – from chapter 2 to chapter 6.The second chapter is mainly literature review,and finds that there are different opinions upon educationhappiness relationship – positive effect,negative effect,inverted U-shape and neutral.The factors that determine the social class in which individuals compete for resources can be broadly divided into three types – innate,acquired and structural factors,thus forming three types of social mobility – meritocratic mobility,reproductive mobility,state-sponsored mobility.Therefore,education may become a ladder of upward social mobility,or solidify social mobility due to social reproduction.In addition,whether the popularization of higher education can promote social mobility and enhance national happiness still needs to be discussed.This study considers that when we test the relationship between education and happiness,it is important to determine the key intermediate variables that education affects happiness,otherwise the impact of these variables on happiness will be "absorbed" by education,resulting in omitted variable bias and misunderstanding the relationship between education and happiness.Bourdieu’s famous capital transfer theory holds that people can exchange education for higher social prestige,economic wealth and political status.Education is an effective way to break the inherent social stratification and promote social mobility.We cannot help thinking,is it education that leads to social stratification,which in turn leads to happiness differentiation? After literature review,the study finds that the existing research focuses on different aspects and has its own characteristics,forming a various of "fragmented" results.Obviously,there is still a lack of an integrated theoretical framework integrating the three.The third chapter mainly put forward the theoretical framework.Based on the theoretical analysis of education,social stratification and happiness differentiation,Pierre bourdieu’s field theory and Kahneman’s prospect theory are introduced to construct an education-society field cognitive schema to reveal the systematic organic correlation and internal mechanism of "heterogeneous individual’s educational choice – upward social mobility and social stratification structure – psychological expectation and realistic perception – residents’ subjective well-being".This paper aims to integrate the "fragmented" research into a relatively complete analytical framework to interpret the puzzle of education-happiness from a different perspective.Happiness comes from comparison.What matters is not what we have,but what we have and our "reference group" does not.Happiness comes from "relative success",unhappiness from relative deprivation.Based on Brau-Duncan status acquisition model,many scholars regard education expectation as not only a key intermediate variable,but also an important prediction variable of individual education acquisition.Expectation comes from comparison,expectation and adaptation.This paper introduces the concept of expectation to explain individual education acquisition and the level of happiness.Education helps individuals realize class transition by bringing them economic capital,social capital and cultural capital.An important premise assumption of this paper is that education affects reference points.Different groups have different reference points.Individuals form expectations by comparing their real situation with reference points which they feel reasonable.Under the effect of expectation,if it adapts to his educational ability and social status,one’s subjective well-being will rise.On the contrary,if one’s educational ability and social status are mismatched,their happiness will decline.In general,people with higher education tend to have higher life expectations,such as better work,higher income,social status,etc.High expectations will deprive people’s satisfaction with life.The fourth chapter mainly analyzed the evolution of Chinese national happiness from the perspective of international comparison.Using national happiness index of 152 economies in the world during 2007-2016,the study finds（1）that in terms of the absolute level of the national happiness index,the difference preface pattern of the national happiness – developed economies→developing economies→poor economies from high to low is obvious;（2）that when it comes to the incrementation of national happiness index,the difference preface pattern become developing economies→poor economies→developed economies from positive to negative.In other words,the national happiness of developing and poor economies were on the rising path,while the developed economies has witnessed a slight increase or even declining trend.It is critical to explore the "original image" of Chinese national happiness in a reasonable way.Using mutual evidence and QCA analysis of worldwide authoritative databases,this paper conducts a series of dynamic analysis and textual research to have a comprehensive study.The study finds（1）that all databases based on this paper without exception indicates that Chinese national happiness has been on a rising trend in the past ten years.Although there are fluctuations from year to year,the overall trend is rising rather than stagnating,and there is no sign of worrying decline,（2）that the improvement of Chinese national happiness is particularly outstanding both among developing countries and transition economies based on the three major international databases,（3）that in China,the national happiness index of rural and urban in 2005 and 2015 were 3.36,3.45,3.83 and 3.89 respectively,from which we can see that,rural’s happiness index was slightly lower than that of in urban,while the increase in rural was higher than that of in urban during this period,and（4）that this paper try to identify the adaptation situation and its corresponding path orientation for the improvement of Chinese national happiness.The fifth chapter is mainly focused on the study of systematic correlation and internal mechanism of "popularization of higher education – upward social mobility – psychological expectation and realistic perception – subjective well-being".The unique institutional environment of China’s college enrollment expansion provides a valuable "quasi-natural experimental environment" for this paper’s research.Therefore,based on the perspective of birth cohorts and drawing on the educational "Sorting Machine" thought of American educator Joe Spring,this paper attempts to regard social stratification and mobility as the key intermediate variables of why college enrollment expansion affects national happiness.Based on the CGSS2005-2015 mixed cross-sectional data,this paper uses difference-in-difference method to make unbiased estimation on whether the expansion of China’s universities can promote social mobility,and leads to the happiness differentiation during the diffusion of academic certificates.The study finds（1）that individuals with higher sociometric status tend to report higher levels of well-being,and the influence of sociometric status in "Face-to-Face Groups" on subjective well-being is more significant than that of socioeconomic status,that is,there is a local ladder effect.As Bertrand Russell pointed out,"beggars do not envy millionaires,but they will certainly envy other beggars who are more successful";（2）that social stratification and mobility have a significant mediating effect on the relationship between college enrollment expansion and national happiness,that is,popularization of higher education has a significant positive effect on individual subjective wellbeing by promoting individual upward social mobility and social status acquisition;（3）there is obvious heterogeneity of the college enrollment expansion policy between urban and rural,highincome and low-income groups.The increasing number of educational opportunities has not reduced the educational inequality as expected.Compared with the rural and low-income groups,the urban and high-income groups have more opportunities to obtain more and better education.This shows that the situation of unequal educational opportunities in our country is still not optimistic.Marketization promotes social mobility and aggravates the anxiety of social inequality at the same time;（4）that in the process of higher education expansion,the influence of education on social stratification and mobility and national well-being shows a significant downward trend.According to the resource dilution theory,signal screening theory,status competition theory and the law of diminishing marginal effects,the continuous expansion of higher education may lead to the phenomenon of diploma inflation,academic degree devaluation,lower differentiation of higher education,weakness of signal screening function,etc.,which leads to the decline of economic returns and happiness returns of higher education.The sixth chapter is mainly analyzed the drift characteristics of individual subjective wellbeing from the perspective of expectation adaptation.This chapter proposes a method to capture the movement of educational reference points,exploring the educational choices of heterogeneous individuals,the returns of education to happiness,and how education can screen different groups into corresponding occupations and social strata,and lead to the happiness differentiation.This paper conduct a series of models,including basic models,adjustment models and expectation adaptation models,and uses propensity score matching method to dynamically simulate and evolve how education,social strata and happiness drift in different situations,and to interpret the important meaning of this "drift" of happiness,so as to explore the overall correlation characteristics among the three,which has important theoretical and application values.Individual expectation is closely related to subjective well-being.According to expectation level theory,individual well-being is determined by the gap between aspiration and achievement.This paper defines the movement of subjective well-being curve caused by the movement of educational reference point as the "drift" of well-being function.The results show（1）that with the improvement of education,the positive influence of material factors’ including income and social status on subjective well-being gradually fall into a decline,while the influence of non-material factors’ –health–on subjective well-being show an upward trend on the contrary;（2）that income has no significant moderating effect on the relationship between education and happiness,whilw social status and health do have.Under the negative moderating effect of social status,the relationship between education and happiness is inverted U-shaped;（3）that the mismatch between education and expectation of the corresponding social status is the main reason for the negative adjustment effect of social status.Only when the expectation of the corresponding educational level and social status is met or exceeded,can higher education be linked with higher subjective well-being positively,and then the conclusion can be drawn that the expectation adapts to the social status and educational ability which can ensures the high level of subjective wellbeing.Therefore,we can believe that the starting point of the logical dispute of "happiness paradox" should be shifted if economic growth is indeed conducive to the improvement of national happiness,then the government should seize the economic pulse;On the contrary,if the happiness paradox does appear,it is a mirror that the government should explore the appropriate path to improve the national happiness from the aspect of people’s livelihood,and prevent from repeating the mistake of utilitarianism and falling into the strange circle of "happiness paradox".In addition,it is critical for harmonious society to implement precision governance,provide a fair and reasonable social mobility mechanism,break down the barriers,and protect the interests of all social classes to respond different national happiness demands.Focus on building a four-inone "happiness balance valve"----"fairness of income distribution system,equalization of public services,institutionalization of group interest game and popularization of cultural value recognition".When ensuring the basic living and development conditions of all social members,it’s also essential to promote the "free and all-round development" of human beings,shape the generally recognized public value orientation,and guarantee the equalization of basic public service at the same time,so as to ensure each member of society "to do his or her best,to have his or her own place,and to share happiness."... |
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