Chinese Far Wealthier Than a Decade Ago -- but Are They Happier?
January 11, 2005
by Richard Burkholder, International Bureau Chief
Gallup recently completed our fourth comprehensive nationwide survey of
the People's Republic of China -- nearly 3,600 hour-long, in-person, in-home
interviews conducted across both urban and rural areas of the country.
Findings from the latest survey will be presented in coming weeks exclusively
to Gallup Poll On Demand subscribers.
This ambitious project dates back to 1994, when Gallup conducted the first-ever
nationwide survey of China's citizens using strict, probability-based
sampling procedures. Similarly exhaustive hour-long surveys were conducted
in 1997 and 1999.
Gallup has now interviewed more than 15,000 Chinese adults across every
province and autonomous administrative unit in the country -- from rural
areas of inner Mongolia to urban Guangzhou; from Heilongjiang on the border
with Russian Siberia to tropical Hainan Island in the Gulf of Tonkin;
in Tibet (Xizang) and in predominantly Muslim Xinjiang on the border with
Afghanistan.
A Decade of Rapidly Rising Living Standards, Particularly in Urban Areas
As the current survey's findings document, the change in the living standards
of China's people over the last decade is nothing short of astonishing
-- surely the most dramatic transformation ever witnessed by more than
a fifth of mankind over such a brief period.
Nationwide, average reported household incomes are now nearly 2 1/2 times
what respondents reported in 1994. The bulk of this dramatic income growth
occurred among China's urban residents, who are now, on average, three
times as affluent as their rural counterparts. But even rural incomes
-- which have stagnated in recent years -- are nearly double what they
were a little over a decade ago.
This dramatic rise in affluence has been accompanied by a remarkable degree
of change in the everyday lives of China's 1.3 billion people. In Gallup's
initial 1994 nationwide survey, only a minority (40%) of Chinese households
had a color television set, just one in four owned a refrigerator, 1 in
10 had a landline telephone, and only 3% owned a mobile phone. Video compact
disc players? They had only recently been invented.
Our latest survey indicates that color televisions and landline phones
have become the norm rather than the exception in Chinese homes -- 82%
of households have the former, 63% the latter. Nearly half (48%) of China's
roughly 400 million households now own at least one mobile phone. Even
more remarkable is that at least half (52%) of all Chinese households
now own a VCD player -- double the percentage that owned a refrigerator
in 1994.
Satisfaction
If China's people are far more affluent, are they also more satisfied
with the quality of their lives? On this point, the data are far more
ambiguous.
Gallup asked respondents, "Overall, how satisfied or dissatisfied are
you with the way things are going in your life today -- very satisfied,
somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, or very dissatisfied?" As in
earlier surveys, Chinese are significantly more likely to express satisfaction
(63%) than dissatisfaction (37%) with their current quality of life, with
the largest percentage expressing moderate, rather than strong, satisfaction
(51% say "somewhat satisfied" and 12% say "very satisfied")*. Only a tiny
minority of Chinese -- never more than 8% in any of our four surveys --
describe themselves as "very dissatisfied."
However, despite impressive growth in average household income, the ratio
of Chinese expressing satisfaction to those expressing dissatisfaction
has actually eroded somewhat over time**.
It is interesting to note that there is no significant difference between
the self-reported satisfaction of China's urban and rural residents, notwithstanding
the enormous (and growing) gap in affluence between China's cities and
its countryside. The proportion of rural residents describing themselves
as "satisfied" is statistically equal to the percentage among their city-dwelling
counterparts -- a pattern that has persisted across all four waves of
Gallup's survey.
So is it true that greater affluence does not translate into greater happiness?
Well, not entirely. The data also show that, regardless of where they
live, China's wealthiest residents are indeed happier than the country's
poorest residents. Among the one in eight households fortunate enough
to have total annual incomes of 30,000 RMB ($3,620 U.S.) or more, 80%
describe themselves as either very (16%) or somewhat (64%) satisfied with
the way things are going in their lives. In contrast, among those with
total annual household incomes below 3,000 RMB ($362 U.S.), only about
half (49%) say they are either very (11%) or somewhat (38%) satisfied.
About 1 in 10 Chinese households fall into this very low income category.
All That Glitters Is Not Gold?
How can it be that China's city dwellers -- so much better off financially
than their rural counterparts -- appear to be no more satisfied with their
lives? Is this simply a matter of higher expectations, or might there
be other factors at work?
One explanation for this apparent paradox may lie in the responses to
a follow-up question in which respondents were asked to rate their level
of satisfaction with their own community "as a place to live."
While China's cities continue to grow rapidly because of massive internal
migration, those Chinese who have remained in the countryside are now
dramatically more likely than their urban counterparts to say they are
satisfied with their own communities "as a place to live." Furthermore,
although this pattern existed to a modest degree in responses to our 1994
survey, it has become more pronounced in each subsequent wave.
Why might this be? Despite the far greater economic opportunities they
provide, China's cities certainly are not immune to many of the ills that
have plagued rapidly expanding urban sectors worldwide -- such as a shortage
of available and affordable housing, pollution, and even rising crime
rates. Even so, tens of millions of Chinese continue to "vote with their
feet" each year, leaving the agricultural hinterlands in search of a brighter
future elsewhere.
**When Gallup first asked this question in China in 1994, the following
five-response-choice scale was used: "very satisfied, somewhat satisfied,
neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, or very dissatisfied?"
However, because such a high proportion (38%) of the 1994 respondents
opted for the 'soft option' mid-point ("neither satisfied nor dissatisfied"),
in each subsequent wave of this survey we have substituted the following
four-choice scale: "very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied,
or very dissatisfied?"
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