Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The China Population Communication Center recently released the results of a 2015 survey, which found that a remarkable 77 percent of Chinese families feel "happy," with some 22.5 percent feeling "very happy," both figures up half a percent on 2014. These seem extraordinarily high numbers. Chinese cities can be a highly stressful place to live, after all: the crowds, the impatience, the lack of trust, traffic and the pollution, among others.

But here is the curious thing. This survey is a reflection of familial happiness, not individual or society-wide happiness. And considered on those terms at least, China might look to be doing all right. The 4-2-1 family model, with four grandparents, two parents and one child, may be a demographic nightmare, but it enables both parents to work while grandparents can be close to their grandchildren. Families thus stay close, preventing the loneliness so common among the elderly in the West. This might be one reason for greater family happiness.

But there might be economic reasons that give a more fundamental explanation for the high levels of family happiness. 

Happiness in a familial sense might best be defined as the feeling that each generation is doing better than the one before. The generation that had lived through the 1950s and 1960s has known turmoil, famine and chaos. But the retirement age of just 55, and the fortunes gained from the selling-off of state-owned property and the seemingly endless housing boom, has created a generation with considerable assets and the time to enjoy their wealth.

These seniors, naturally, want to help their children to get on the property ladder, so they often assist their adult children in buying a number of properties. (The vast proportion of Chinese economic assets are in real estate rather than in stocks or bank savings, with the one being unstable, the other giving no real dividend).

And so with this wealth, as property prices continue to boom, the grandchildren can enter good local schools, or even study abroad when they go to university.

This strategy of domestic enrichment is a familiar one, and has worked for many millions of ordinary Chinese.

I once lived next to the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing. In the nearby park, every morning retirees would gather, for exercises and socializing, taking their grandchildren with them to play. The scene was one of easygoing contentment.

And why not? Most people there were retired doctors and nurses, who had been able to purchase apartments which had formerly been assigned to them via their work unit. Eventually these apartments were worth millions of yuan. They were then rented out to people like me so that the landlords could live and travel on the income, or they were sold, and the profits reinvested.

Hence why these families were happy. Life had been good to them, and they saw no end to it, as long as property prices kept rising.

Western families, on the other hand, are finding the reverse to be true. For too many working class families, globalization has led to a decline in secure employment, as expensive skilled jobs have been shipped overseas. Insecure service sector jobs have been an inadequate replacement. It is possible for many that their children will be worse off than they are.

UK millennials - those born between 1982 and 2004 - are for example on average 16 percent less likely than their parents to own their own home. The shrinking of horizons this represents, the diminution of respect and control across the generations, causes embitterment and unhappiness. The symptoms of economic trauma are not hard to find.

Health indicators for middle-aged, less educated whites in the US are declining, unlike every other demographic. We have also seen the rise of Donald Trump and the shocking Brexit vote.

Whether these protest votes will have an effect on their economic causes is uncertain, but there can be no doubting the rising sense of economic strife - and until that ends, Western families may find themselves unhappy for some time yet.

The author has been a freelance journalist in China since 2008. Follow him at @bucketoftongues