全球化对西欧国民生活满意度的影响(2002-2014年)

Globalization and Life Satisfaction in West Europe (2002-2014)

全球化是产品、资本、服务和人员的跨境流动以及观念和规范跨境扩散的历史进程,主要包括经济、政治、社会和人口四个维度。对于西欧国民而言,经济全球化带来了廉价产品和服务,但加剧了贫富分化和工作机会的流失;政治全球化提供了形式多样的国际公共产品,同时产生少量的经济和生命成本;社会(文化)全球化既满足了欧洲中心主义和文化优越感,又威胁到文化、经济和人身安全;人口全球化在降低生活成本的同时,导致了严重的安全问题和巨额的社会福利支出。总体上,全球化降低了西欧国民的生活满意度。基于2002-2014年"欧洲社会调查"数据的跨层次回归分析以及稳健性检测支持了本文的假设,即全球化在总体上降低了西欧国民的主观幸福感,其中经济全球化、社会(文化)全球化和人口全球化与结果变量呈显著负相关关系,而政治全球化则未能显著地增进他们的生活满意度。此外,欧洲一体化既是全球化的重要动力,又是针对全球化负外部性的保护带,因而显著提高了西欧国民的生活质量。

Globalization is a historical process in which products,capital,services and persons move and ideas and norms spread across borders,which mainly consists of economic,political,social and demographic dimensions.To the western Europeans,economic globalization brings cheap products and services while widening the gap between the rich and poor and causing severe job losses.Political globalization provides a variety of international public goods while incurring moderate monetary and life costs.Societal globalization consolidates European centralism and cultural superiority on one hand and on the other,poses threats to cultural and physical safety.At last,demographic globalization reduces living costs at the cost of national security and leads to massive welfare spending.Overall,globalization has decreased the life satisfaction of the western Europeans.The mixed level OLS regressions and subsequent robustness check based upon the data from European Social Survey(2002-2014)provide sound empirical evidence to the hypotheses in this paper.That is,globalization as a whole,and especially that in the economic,societal and demographic areas,has reduced the subjective well-being of the western Europeans,whereas political globalization has not increased their happiness.Additionally,the European integration has significantly promoted the living quality of the citizens in west Europe,which provides not only an important impetus to globalization but a protection belt against the negative externalities of globalization.