Aspirations, Adaptation and Subjective Well-Being of Rural–Urban Migrants in China

Abstract

To what extent is economic welfare determined by objective conditions and to what extent by aspirations and the degree to which they adapt to objective conditions? This question – relevant to many normative issues in economics – has been addressed by both economists and psychologists but with different answers. Easterlin (2006) contrasts economists’ emphasis on the importance of objective conditions in the determination of subjective well-being with psychologists’ tendency to regard subjective well-being as the stable product of personality and genetics, and adaptation to objective conditions as rapid and complete. Easterlin’s synthetic panel analysis for the United States favours an intermediate position in which happiness is the product of objective conditions in various life domains and of aspirations in each domain. The key issue, therefore, is the speed and extent to which aspirations adapt to circumstances. It is the issue that underlies this chapter.