Environmental Effects of City–County Mergers in China: Strengthening Governance or Aggravating Pollution?

Empirical Analysis of Population Urbanization and Residents’ Life Satisfaction—Based on 2017 CGSS

As the greatest potential of domestic demand, new urbanization shoulders the important mission of improving the living standards of residents. Based on the theory of exploitation, this paper systematically established the theoretical relationships among population urbanization rate, human capital, family capital, and life satisfaction. Through the 2017 China Comprehensive Social Survey of 1940 micro-individuals for empirical analysis, the results show that: (1) the urbanization rate of the core explanatory variable has a significant and robust positive effect on individual life satisfaction and on human capital and family capital; (2) the urbanization rate of the core explanatory variable has a significant positive effect on human capital and family capital; (3) human capital and family capital have significant positive effects on life satisfaction; (4) in the heterogeneity discussion, the male capital accumulation is higher than the female, but life satisfaction is the opposite. With the increase in age, the individuals accumulated the highest human capital and family capital in 26–34 years old and reached the peak in life satisfaction after retirement in 60–83 years old. As far as regional differences are concerned, individual human capital, family capital, and life satisfaction are decreasing from the east to the west. The results of the study will help to establish a healthy and perfect regional urbanization and to enhance the mental health of residents by promoting talent development and advocating family-friendly construction.

Research on the Impact of the County-to-District Reform on Environmental Pollution in China

Based on the panel data of 267 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2016, this paper adopts propensity score matching (PSM) and difference-in-difference (DID) as research methods to test and analyze the impact effect of the county-to-district reform on the environmental pollution. The results show that: (1) The county-to-district reforms have significantly increased the urban environmental pollution. After changing the time and space sample size of the reformed cities, there is no obvious difference in the estimated results; (2) In terms of time, the impact of the county-to-district reforms on environmental pollution has a short-term dynamic, and there is a difference between industrial wastewater pollution and industrial waste-gas pollution; (3) By region, the eastern cities have significantly increased the level of environmental pollution after the county-to-district reforms, both the coefficient and the significance level of the cities in the Mid-West are weaker than those in the East, and presents Eastern > Central > Western; (4) Mechanism testing shows that the county-to-district reforms significantly expand urban space and agglomerate population. The former exacerbates the effects of environmental pollution, while the latter suppresses the growth of environmental pollution. Therefore, it is necessary for the government to reduce the institutional constraints of population migration to big cities and blind land expansion so as to promote pollution reduction.