Table 3.
Robustness analysis
| Panel A. Alternative treatment and control groups | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dependent variable: Happiness (1–5) | Adjacent provinces excluded Full (1) | Adjacent provinces as another treatment Full (2) | Adjacent provinces excluded Rural (3) | Adjacent provinces as another treatment Rural (4) |
| Quake (Sichuan) | − 0.093*** (0.023) | − 0.094*** (0.023) | − 0.146*** (0.035) | − 0.146*** (0.035) |
| Quake (adjacent provinces) | 0.012 (0.107) | 0.049 (0.122) | ||
| Baseline covariates | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Year FE | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Province FE | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Adjusted R2 | 0.086 | 0.081 | 0.092 | 0.085 |
| N1 | 3677 | 3677 | 1986 | 1986 |
| N2 | 4835 | 2748 | ||
| N | 27,370 | 32,205 | 14,299 | 17,047 |
| Panel B. Alternative model specifications | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dependent variable: Happiness (1–5) | Additional covariates Full (1) | Ordered probit Full (2) | Additional covariates Rural (3) | Ordered probit Rural (4) |
| Quake | − 0.079** (0.027) | − 0.113** (0.042) | ||
| Average partial effects of the quake on the probability of happiness being equal to | ||||
| 1 | 0.003*** (0.000) | 0.005*** (0.001) | ||
| 2 | 0.012*** (0.003) | 0.020*** (0.004) | ||
| 3 | 0.027*** (0.006) | 0.044*** (0.010) | ||
| 4 | − 0.015*** (0.003) | -0.031*** (0.005) | ||
| 5 | − 0.026*** (0.006) | -0.039*** (0.009) | ||
| Baseline covariates | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Year FE | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Province FE | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Adjusted R2 | 0.093 | 0.081 | 0.097 | 0.136 |
| N1 | 3672 | 3677 | 1984 | 1984 |
| N | 32,127 | 32,205 | 17,006 | 17,047 |
The dependent variable is self-reported happiness (1–5). In Panel A, columns (1) and (3) exclude Shaanxi, Gansu, and Chongqing; columns (2) and (4) treat the three provinces as a second treatment group. In Panel B, columns (1) and (3) add covariates, including a hukou dummy, a membership of the Communist Party dummy, household size, provincial population size, provincial cohort of high school students, provincial sex ratio, and old dependency ratio; columns (2) and (4) estimate ordered probit models and present average partial effects of the earthquake on the probability of happiness at specific levels. All the columns include baseline covariates, year fixed effects (FEs), and province FEs as in columns (2) and (4) of Table 2. N, N1, and N2 represent sample size, the number of Sichuan observations, and the number of observations from Shaanxi, Gansu, and Chongqing, respectively. Pseudo-R-squared is reported for ordered probit models. Standard errors, clustered at the province level, are shown in parentheses. *** significance at the 1% level, ** significance at the 5% level