Crossing the rice–wheat border: Income, gender role attitudes and female subjective well-being

Abstract

Working women's subjective well-being has raised a growing interest and debate over the last few decades. The present study addresses the puzzlement of whether gender ‘neutral’ or ‘matter’ in the income-happiness nexus by shedding new light on the rice–wheat system. The 9898 married female participants completed the interview-questionnaire from four waves of the Chinese General Social Survey from 2012 to 2017, answering questions about subjective well-being, time allocation, and gender role attitudes. We find a different pattern in the income-female subjective well-being nexus amongst rice and wheat agriculture regions. Specifically, higher income promotes female subjective well-being in rice agriculture regions, whilst such an association is not valid in wheat agriculture regions. Women will feel stressed and unhappy in wheat agriculture regions when their income exceeds the spouses'. Further, the mechanism analyses reveals two channels that account for these results, namely, gender role attitudes and time allocation.