Impact of Governments’ Commitment to Housing Affordability Policy on People’s Happiness: Evidence from China

Although government-led housing affordability policy is an important issue worldwide, there has been little research on how local governments’ commitment to such policy affects people’s subjective well-being or happiness. By combining the analysis of textual information from provincial governments’ annual working reports and microdata from four waves of the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), this article empirically explores the relationship between political discourses of provincial governments’ committment to housing affordability policies (HAPC) and residents’ self-reported happiness. Our results suggest that Chinese urban residents’ happiness is higher when the local government promises greater dedication to housing affordability improvement; however, this phenomenon existed only in the early 2010s, and the relationship between HAPC and residents’ happiness was insignificant in the mid-2010s, and even became negative in the late 2010s. In addition, we also find that the the association between HAPC and residents’ happiness differs among population groups. We conclude the article with discussions of the implications of the findings for housing policymaking and urban governance.