The Relationship Between the Gender Gap in Subjective Well-Being and Leisure Activities in China

This study explains the observed gender gap in subjective well-being (SWB) in China using heterogeneous marginal utility derived from leisure hours. We find that women in China exhibit higher levels of well-being than men and that there is a conditional unexplained gender gap in SWB ranging between 0.15 and 0.17. This conditional gap can be partly (30-40%) explained by the gender difference in the marginal utility of leisure hours. Meanwhile, we find a strong negative effect of hours spent on housework. These findings are robust to a variety of model specifications and subsamples.