| Happiness is the fundamental standard to measure the progress and development of a society,as well as the goal of national public policy and economic development.With the continuous increase of China’s per capita GDP and per capita disposable income,China’s residents’ happiness has not been significantly improved,and China’s residents have fallen into a situation of "stagnation of happiness".In recent years,the concept of "excessive consumption" of Chinese residents and the good credit policy of the government have increased the consumption behavior of Chinese residents though debt."Consumption through debt" has become a new mode of consumption for many Chinese households,which is accompanied by an increase in the leverage ratio of the household sector.Debt is an important financial tool to smooth intertemporal consumption,but it will also have a negative impact on the physical and mental health of residents.And with the increasing improvement of the quality of life,compared with the change of their own consumption level,individuals pay more attention to the consumption gap with others.Therefore,whether household debt can effectively improve the happiness of Chinese residents and whether there is a positive impact mechanism of debt on happiness to improve residents’ subjective well-being is worth further exploration.From previous studies,it has been found that household debt has a negative impact on residents’ happiness,mainly through the negative impact of damaging residents’ health level.There has been no in-depth research on the possible positive impact of debt as a financial tool on residents’ happiness through consumption.Therefore,this article uses CHFS mixed cross-sectional data from 2017 and 2019 to empirically analyze the impact of household debt on residents’ subjective well-being,and uses a multiple mediator effect model to comprehensively examine the relative consumption deprivation and health channel effects of household debt on residents’ subjective well-being,as well as compare the size of the two effects.Focusing on analyzing the positive impact of household debt on residents’ subjective well-being through alleviating the relative consumption deprivation,and the possibility of it being concealed by negative effects of health,multiple robustness tests were conducted to ensure the reliability of the conclusion.In addition,the paper analyzes the heterogeneity of consumption type,debt type,family wealth level,education level and urban category on the channels of relative deprivation of consumption.The results show that the overall impact of household debt on residents’ subjective well-being is negative,but household debt can improve residents’ subjective well-being by alleviating the relative deprivation of consumption,and this positive effect is masked due to the negative effect of debt reducing well-being through deteriorating residents’ health.In this paper,the instrumental variable method is used to alleviate the endogenous problems in the model,and the robustness test is carried out by changing the setting of variables and changing the regression method and so on,which proves that the above conclusions are reliable.In addition,the heterogeneity analysis finds that the positive effect of debt improving well-being through alleviating the relative deprivation of consumption mainly occurs in enjoyment-oriented consumption,and non-housing debt plays a major role.At the same time,the positive effect mainly occurs in the "vulnerable groups" with lower wealth level and education level,and mainly occurs in non-first-tier cities.The research expands the theoretical analysis that debt affects residents’ well-being.Government and relevant financial institutions should "make best use of the advantages and bypass the disadvantages",improve the supply structure of credit products and supporting policies,and give full play to the positive role of debt in building "Happy China". |
