TY - JOUR
T1 - Family structure and home ownership
T2 - Evidence from China
AU - Wang, Shun
AU - Zhou, Weina
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2017/12
Y1 - 2017/12
N2 - This paper studies how individuals, particularly low-income individuals, have financed housing purchases since the housing market was privatized in urban China in the 1990s. To the surprise of many policy makers and economists, more than 80% of the households in urban China owned private housing by the end of 2010. In contrast to most developed countries, we find that male siblings are important borrowing resources to purchase housing. Conditional on the number of siblings, having more brothers instead of sisters increases the probability of owning housing among male individuals born during the baby boom (1949–1978) in urban China. However, there is no such brother effect for females. The brother effect is stronger for males with low income or low levels of education and is also stronger when brothers are wealthier. Our results are robust to different model specifications. Our results suggest that females are likely to be excluded from family-based informal financial market for housing purchase among baby boom generations in China.
AB - This paper studies how individuals, particularly low-income individuals, have financed housing purchases since the housing market was privatized in urban China in the 1990s. To the surprise of many policy makers and economists, more than 80% of the households in urban China owned private housing by the end of 2010. In contrast to most developed countries, we find that male siblings are important borrowing resources to purchase housing. Conditional on the number of siblings, having more brothers instead of sisters increases the probability of owning housing among male individuals born during the baby boom (1949–1978) in urban China. However, there is no such brother effect for females. The brother effect is stronger for males with low income or low levels of education and is also stronger when brothers are wealthier. Our results are robust to different model specifications. Our results suggest that females are likely to be excluded from family-based informal financial market for housing purchase among baby boom generations in China.
KW - China
KW - Gender inequality
KW - Housing
KW - Informal financial market
KW - Siblings
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85030112625&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.chieco.2017.09.003
DO - 10.1016/j.chieco.2017.09.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85030112625
SN - 1043-951X
VL - 46
SP - 165
EP - 179
JO - China Economic Review
JF - China Economic Review
ER -