Impact Of Village’s Direct Democracy On Farmers’ Happiness

Based on the survey data of956farmers and64poor villages from8counties in4provinces in Midwestern China, this paper aims to seek the relationship between village’s direct democracy and farmers’ happiness. For the total sample farmers, village’s direct democracy has a significant positive impact on farmers’ subjective well-being. One percent increase of the number of village assembly will, in our estimation on happiness gaining, equal1.62percent increase of average farmer’s pure income to gain the same increase of subjective well-being. However, the separate analysis of the poor sample and non-poor sample gives the contrary conclusions that the village’s direct democracy could increase the happiness of the non-poor sample significantly, but not the poor sample. Therefore, we agree that it is necessary to develop village’s direct democracy if the objective conditions permit. At the same time, appropriate measures must be taken to ensure that village’s direct democracy should increase the happiness of the poor.