The Impact of Higher Education Expansion on Subjective Well-Being during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Chinese Social Survey

The rage of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the downward trend seen in the economy, has further aggravated the downturn of the job market and diminished people’s sense of wellbeing in recent years. To mitigate the detrimental effects of the pandemic on college students’ employment, the Chinese government has further expanded the enrollment of postgraduate and undergraduate students. This study leverages data from the 2019 and 2021 waves of the Chinese Social Survey and constructs a difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine the effect of the higher education expansion (HEE) policy, initiated in 1999, on individuals’ subjective well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that HEE policy could significantly improve individuals’ subjective well-being (SWB) during the pandemic, and that social class mobility emerges as a vital mechanism through which HEE policy impacts individuals’ SWB. Furthermore, there is a local-ladder effect due to reference dependence, with socio-metric status having a greater impact on SWB than socioeconomic status. This study reveals that the level of an individual’s happiness depends largely on whom they are compared with. This implies that the key focus of the HEE policy is to stimulate individuals’ potential and motivation for upward social mobility, ultimately enhancing their overall sense of well-being.