Does an Increase in Household Income Make Adolescents Happy? Associations between Household Income Mobility and Subjective Well-Being Among Chinese Adolescents

Background and Purpose: The relationship between adult happiness and income has been discussed extensively. However, among children and adolescents, who are not directly involved in household economic activities, this relationship between household income mobility and happiness is more complicated and remains less explored.

Methods: We used nationally representative data from the China Family Panel Study (CFPS) from 2012 to 2018. The analytic sample consisted of 3,607 Chinese adolescents aged 10 to 19 years in 2018. We defined two dynamic counter variable of income mobility. Upward mobility was indicated by positive results, with all negative values recoded to zero. Conversely, downward mobility was defined as negative results, with all positive values recoded to zero. Using an ordinary least squares model, we examined the associations between 2-year (2016–2018), 4-year (2014–2018), and 6-year (2012–2018) income mobility (i.e., upward mobility and downward mobility) and adolescent subjective well-being (i.e., happiness and depression). We further explored whether the associations were mediated by parental care and moderated by adolescent age, adolescent sex, and baseline household economic status.

Results: We found that upward household income mobility had a negative impact on adolescents’ subjective well-being and that parental care mediated this association. In addition, the negative effect of upward mobility on adolescents’ subjective well-being was stronger in girls, older adolescents, and those who lived in middle- or high-income households in the base year. We found no evidence that downward mobility had a significant effect on the subjective well-being of adolescents.

Conclusion and Implications: Our findings emphasized that reductions in parental care due to income growth had negative effects on adolescents’ subjective well-being, despite improvements in household financial status. Achieving synchronous growth of the young generation’s subjective well-being and household income is an important issue that policy-makers must consider. Social services and intervention programs are needed for children and adolescents living in high-risk families that lack parental care, regardless of the family economic status. Older adolescents and female adolescents may need more attention.