ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1550200
Job quality and employee happiness: Evidence from China
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Information Engineering, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, Jiangsu Province, China
- 2School of Economics and Management, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou, Jiangsu Province, China
- 3Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University, Hangzhou, China
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Despite the rapid economic growth in China over the past few decades, income inequality, work pressure, and imbalances in career development opportunities have increasingly affected employee subjective well-being and overall quality of life. Using a nationally-representative survey data in China, we construct an index of job quality at the individual level using a multidimensional approach and then estimate the effect of job quality on employee happiness. Results from instrumental variable estimation show that job quality has a significantly positive effect on employee happiness.Moreover, a high-quality jobs enhances employee subjective well-being mainly through pathways including improved mental health and increased harmony perception.To improve the well-being of employees in developing countries, this paper emphasizes the importance of policy support to improve the quality of their work.
Keywords: job quality, Employee, happiness, Subjective well-being, Work
Received: 23 Dec 2024; Accepted: 14 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yu, Song and Shen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zheng Shen, Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University, Hangzhou, China
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