Study On The Influence Of Income Gap On The Happiness Of Urban And Rural Residents In Henan Province From The Perspective Of Common Prosperity

Common prosperity is the essential requirement of socialism.To achieve common prosperity,narrowing the income gap is important,but common prosperity is not a uniform egalitarianism,so it is worth further research to narrow the income gap to what extent.People’s happiness is the ultimate goal of promoting high-quality development.Henan Province is a large agricultural province and a large population province.The research on its income gap and happiness is typical in China.This paper takes the improvement of residents’ happiness as the entry point,and based on the case of Henan Province,studies the influence mechanism of urban(rural)internal income gap on the happiness of urban(rural)residents,and then obtains the reasonable adjustment threshold range of urban(rural)internal income gap,which provides empirical reference for how to grasp the adjustment intensity of income gap in the process of promoting the realization of the dual common prosperity of subjective welfare and economic welfare in Henan Province.This paper constructs the theoretical mechanism and model framework according to the psychological mechanism and external mechanism of income gap affecting happiness,as well as the factors of residents’ social cognition,individual and family characteristics and other factors that affect happiness.Then the empirical analysis is carried out under the framework of this model.In the empirical analysis,self-reported happiness and Gini coefficient indexes commonly used in relevant studies are used for happiness and income gap.The sample data are the survey data of Henan Province in 2010,2011,2012,2013 and2015 of CGSS.The analysis of sample data shows that rural have a “double” trend of bigger income gap and lower happiness than urban.However,from the perspective of time trend,both urban and rural residents are increasingly happy,and in recent years,more than half of the relatively happy population occupies the largest proportion.The Ordered Logit model is used to empirically analyze the influence of the urban(rural)internal income gap on the happiness of urban(rural)residents in Henan Province.The robustness test is conducted by changing the income gap index and changing the model estimation method.The main conclusions are as follows:First,from the law of increasing and decreasing marginal effect of the urban internal income gap on happiness,only when the urban internal income gap is within the range of 0.35-0.45 can significantly improve the probability of urban residents being very happy,while the influence of urban internal income gap on other levels of happiness is not statistically significant.Therefore,from the perspective of improving the happiness of urban residents,in order to promote common prosperity,we should control the urban internal income gap within the range of 0.35-0.45.Second,from the law of increasing and decreasing marginal effect of the rural internal income gap on happiness,with the increase of rural internal income gap,the income gap can reduce the probability of rural residents’ general happiness level or below,and improve the probability of rural residents’ very happy level.The income gap can increase the probability of relatively happy before 0.57,but will reduce the probability of relatively happy after 0.57.Based on the reality that the relatively happy population accounts for the largest proportion,it is concluded that the rural internal income gap should be controlled within 0.57 in order to improve the happiness of rural residents and promote common prosperity.Third,although the educational level has a positive marginal effect on the happiness of rural residents in the statistical sense,the sample data show that the educational level of rural residents,especially rural low-income groups,is very low,mainly concentrated in primary school and below,so that the educational level cannot play a positive role in promoting the happiness of rural residents in fact.The marginal effect of the rural internal income gap on the very unhappy rural residents is small.That is to say,adjusting the income gap has a weak effect on improving the happiness of the very unhappy rural groups,while improving the education level of rural residents can significantly improve the happiness of rural residents.According to the above conclusions,it is proposed to broaden the income channels of rural farmers,optimize the urban and rural income distribution system,and reasonably control the adjustment of urban internal and rural internal income gap,increase the investment in education in rural and remote areas,provide relatively fair education conditions,and further strengthen the construction of social fair and social credit system,promote social justice and harmony and other policy suggestions.