“Identity premium” on subjective well-being: Evidence from the Communist Party membership in China

ABSTRACT

Joining the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is often associated with material returns, but whether and how this contributes to better subjective well-being remains under-researched. Using data from the 2012 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS), this paper examines the effect of party membership on Chinese residents’ subjective well-being. This paper has found that CCP membership, as a prestigious social identity, has a pure effect on subjective well-being. This happiness effect—termed by this research as identity premium—is greater when party membership is subject to scarcity. These findings suggest that it is the enhanced sense of self-regard brought by the relative value of party membership that boosts people’s satisfaction with life.

KEYWORDS:

• Subjective well-being
• Identity economics
• Social comparison
• Political party
• China
• CCP membership

Highlights

• Investigates the heterogeneity effects of Chinese Communist Party membership on individuals’ subjective well-being.

• CCP membership exerts a pure effect or identity premium on individuals’ subjective well-being.

• Identity premium is greater when CCP membership is scarce, as membership attainment leads to gains in positional identity.

Acknowledgements

We appreciate the National Survey Research Center of Renmin University of China with the China general social survey (CGSS) data. This paper has greatly benefitted from comments of Kezhong Zhang, Yuanyuan Ma and Xin Wan, and comments from seminar participants at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, and comments from participants at 28th Annuals Conference of Chinese Economics Association in the UK.

Notes

¹ The missing value cases comprise 9.9% of the sample. We partition the data into two groups: one set containing the missing values and the other containing the non-missing values. T-test results indicate that there is no significant difference in the sample between the two datasets, which suggests that data are missing completely at random. We therefore simply delete missing value cases.

² Detailed definitions and descriptions of the selected variables are shown in the appendix.

³ The proportion of CCP members in government agencies, institutions, and enterprises is calculated according to 2014 CCP’s Statistical Bulletin and 2015 China Statistical Yearbook (zhongguo tongji nianjian) which is available at: http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2015/indexch.htm (accessed: 22 June 2019).

⁴ The details of party membership admission are available on the CCP’s official website: http://news.12371.cn/zuzhi/(accessed: 1 November 2019).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 71403296], National Social Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 15BJL088] and Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China [Grant No. 19YJC790090].