Although an increasing number of scholars are evaluating rail transit benefits, there have been surprisingly few studies of the links between metro proximity and happiness. The principal objective of this paper is to assess the benefits of metro proximity for individual’s happiness. A key challenge to empirically answering this question is the fact that residential location is likely to be the result of self-selection, i.e., personal preference, such that living around a rail station can increase residents’ happiness. Taking advantage of the largely exogenous residential locations of those who bought their house 10 years earlier than the operation of their nearest metro station and those households living in non-market housing in Shanghai, we find proximity to a subway station robustly promotes happiness at the individual level. These results suggest that the development of rail transit and transit-oriented development (TOD) are promising ways to increase happiness.

中文翻译：

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地铁附近能促进幸福吗？来自上海的证据

尽管越来越多的学者正在评估轨道交通的好处，但令人惊讶的是，很少有人研究地铁邻近性与幸福之间的联系。本文的主要目的是评估地铁接近对个人幸福的好处。从经验上回答这个问题的一个关键挑战是，居住地点可能是自我选择（即个人喜好）的结果，居住在火车站附近可以增加居民的幸福感。利用比最近的地铁站运营早十年购买房屋的人以及那些住在上海非市场住房中的家庭的大量外来居住区，我们发现靠近地铁站可以极大地促进个人的幸福感水平。