Urbanization and subjective well-being of native urban residents: evidence from the “new-type urbanization pilot policy” in China

Urbanization is a process whereby rural populations move to urban areas and enjoy the benefits brought by urban development. Existing research has placed a primary focus on the welfare of rural–urban migrants during the urbanization; whereas, the native urban residents have aroused minor attention. With the “New-type Urbanization pilot policy” in China as a quasi-experiment, this study presents more insights into how urbanization affects the subjective well-being of native urban residents. Exploiting a nationally representative survey dataset of China and performing the staggered difference-in-differences design, this paper confirms that the urbanization in the New Era of China significantly improves the subjective well-being by nearly 3.82%. The mechanisms through which the policy enhances subjective well-being are explored via the local public services provision channel and the income channel. As revealed by the result of the in-depth heterogeneity effects, the effect is greater among female, less educated and lower income urban residents, and it exerts a geographical effect on areas at a lower pre-urbanization level.