A Study On Religious Belief And Its Effects On Subjective Well-being In Rural China

Religion has played an important role in human life for thousands of years. It not only affects the course of human civilization, but also influences every aspect of human life. Although the science and technology make a great progress in modern society, religion has not died out, and moreover, it has become an important part of human spiritual life. More and more studies have found that religious beliefs have important effects on the individual subjective well-being. Currently, rural residents are still accounted for the bulk of China’s total population; their spiritual life situation profoundly affects the socialist spiritual civilization construction. Since the construction of spiritual civilization in rural areas is lagging behind, religion has become an important part of the spiritual life of rural residents. At present, what is the status of religious belief in Chinese rural areas? What are the factors which affect the choice of religious belief for rural residents? How religious belief affects the subjective well-being of rural residents? These issues are worthy of discussion for us. Using the data of "Chinese General Social Survey" in2006and2010(CGSS2006&CGSS2010), this study analyses these questions with descriptive statistical method, binary logistic regression model, multinomial logistic regression model and ordered logistic regression model. By doing these, we can make a detailed description of the status about religious belief in Chinese rural areas, and what’s more, we can also find out the relationship between religious beliefs and subjective well-being of rural residents.The results of the quantitative analyses show that:(1) the rural residents who have religious belief account for13.92%of the population in rural area;(2) the odds of women who believe in religion is higher than men in rural area;(3) a U-shaped relationship has been found between age and religious beliefs in rural area, at first, with the rise of age,the odds of rural residents who believe in religion declines, after reaching a certain age the odds of rural residents who believe in religion will grow when the age is rising;(4) the odds of Han nationality who choose to believe in religion is lower than minority nationality in Chinese rural areas;(5) the higher of rural residents’educational attainments, the lower odds of people who choose to believe in religion;(6) the higher of the family incomes, the higher the odds of rural residents who choose to believe in religion;(7) the odds of rural residents in the central and western regions who choose to believe in religion is lower than the eastern region;(8) different factors play different roles for rural residents to choose the type of religion; and (9) on the whole, the religious belief has no significant effect on subjective well-being of rural residents. However, the religious belief in different areas has different influences on the subjective well-being. In particular, in the east, rural residents who believe in Buddhism and folk belief are more likely to feel unhappy than those who have no religious belief; rural residents who believe in Christianity, Islam and other religions have no significant differences with the non-religious groups in terms of subjective well-being. In the central region, no matter what kind of religions the rural residents believe in, there is no significant effect on the subjective well-being. In the west, rural residents who believe in Islam are more likely to feel happy than the non-religious groups; however, there is no significant differences between rural residents who believe in Buddhism, folk, Christianity, other religions or non-religious beliefs in terms of subjective well-being.