Differences in Subjective Well-Being between Formal and Informal Workers in Urban China.

This paper examines the relationship between different types of employment and subjective well-being with a focus on informal employment. The China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS) for three selected years (2012, 2014 and 2016) shows an upward trend in the subjective well-being of urban workers in the 2010s. However, although the gap in subjective well-being between formal and informal workers narrowed, informal workers' subjective well-being was still lower than their formal counterparts. Factors affecting the subjective well-being of formal and informal workers and their different effects were revealed to explain this difference. The subjective well-being of informal workers is significantly related to their informal status of employment, economic conditions (such as income and working hours), human capital, social capital (such as perceived social justice and perceived community connectedness) and urban environment. The paper enhances the understanding of people's subjective well-being by differentiating informal/formal segments of working populations.

The Changing Factors Affecting Local Environmental Governance in China: Evidence from a Study of Prefecture-Level Cities in Guangdong Province.

This paper aims to examine the changing factors underlying China's environmental governance, by investigating the long-term dynamic impacts of related endogenous and exogenous factors and considering regional differences in these factors. The study estimated environmental regulation intensity and employed the geographical detector technique to analyze its driving factors, based on 21 prefecture-level cities in Guangdong Province, China, from 1990 to 2016. The results showed that environmental regulation intensity has increased in Guangdong Province over the past 27 years. The results also indicated that local environmental governance was affected by global-local interactions and changed based on different regional developmental phases. At first, factors within a region affected local environmental policies more significantly, such as economic development and urbanization. However, in the long run, globalization's impacts have been the most important factors influencing environmental governance. Further analysis showed that environmental regulation intensity in Guangdong Province's different regions was affected by different driven factors. Our analyses contribute to the understanding of China's environmental governance and have policy implications for environmental problem management and China's construction of an ecological civilization.

Association of MIF-173 gene polymorphism with inflammatory bowel disease in Chinese Han population.

AIM: To study whether macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF)-173 gene polymorphism correlates with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in Chinese Han population. METHODS: MIF-173 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was genotyped by tetra-primer amplification refractory mutation system (ARMS) and restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLP)-PCR in 142 healthy subjects and 98 patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). RESULTS: There were no discrepancies between the results obtained by tetra-primer ARMS and RFLP-PCR. The frequency of MIF-173 CC genotype was significantly higher in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) 15.5% than in healthy individuals 5.6% (chi(2)=6.066, P=0.018, OR=3.067 and 95% CI=1.257-7.482). There was a trend towards a higher frequency of CC genotype among CD patients compared with healthy controls, however this did not attain the statistical significance (P=0.245). CONCLUSION: MIF-173 CC genotype may be associated with susceptibility to UC.