How and Why Marriage is Related to Subjective Well-Being? Evidence from Chinese Society

Although research on the relationship between marriage and subjective well-being (SWB) has been a principal focus in social sciences, research that takes cultural contextual effects into account is scant. Drawing on data from the five-wave 2010–2018 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) panel survey, we explore how marital status (married or not) affects SWB among 15,507 Chinese adults. Utilizing the two-way fixed-effects (FE) model, we show that under the influence of Confucianism, getting married leads to higher SWB levels in Chinese people. The result is robust to alternative SWB measures. Our heterogeneous analyses indicate that the impact of marriage varies across gender, cultural context, income, and couples’ differences in the level of education. In particular, how Confucianism impacts the relationship between marriage and SWB differs by gender. Structural equation modeling ( N = 13,196) predicts that individual human capital and social capital are mediators in marriage–SWB relationships.