How does housing wealth affect household consumption? Evidence from macro-data with special implications for China

Thanks to four-decade spectacular economic growth, China's households have been accumulating a stockpile of wealth. In such a context, further concerns have been raised about the relationship between wealth accumulation and improvement of economic well-being, mainly through consumption. The issue becomes even more important when considering the challenges facing China in recent years, which can be characterized by a mix of increasingly leveraged households, escalating housing price, sluggish consumption, slowing economic expansion, trade frictions with the United States, and the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting economic difficulties. With that background in mind, this paper first provides international evidence on the relationship between household consumption and wealth, especially in the form of houses. Drawing on a panel of aggregate data for fourteen countries including China, we find that household consumption positively responds to changes in housing wealth, and this link is further affected by different levels of government spending and financial development. We next relate the international evidence to the case of China, with the focus on some recent policy issues over housing regulations and consumption promotion. Importantly, as the evidence and underlying theories suggest, housing wealth-consumption association does not follow a simplistic pattern, and thus, multiple policy measures could and should be undertaken rather than merely curbing speculative activities in real estate exchanges and associated financial business.     

Housing Wealth, Financial Wealth and Consumption in China

The paper investigates the relationship between changes in asset wealth and the trend movements of household consumption in urban China. Using the vector error correction cointegration model we demonstrate that there is a unique long-run cointegrating relationship between household consumption, disposable income, financial wealth and housing wealth in urban China. We find that housing wealth is the only factor that restores the long-run equilibrium relationship when the cointegrated system is disturbed by an external shock. In addition, our permanent-transitory variance decomposition analysis indicates that nearly all variance in the movement of consumption is permanent, supporting the classical random walk hypothesis of consumption behavior. However, a large proportion of variance in the short-run movements of housing wealth is found to be transitory.     

Understanding the role of homeownership in wealth inequality: Evidence from urban China (1995–2018)

Many scholars have evaluated the wealth creation effects of homeownership over different time periods and have agreed on the positive role of homeownership. However, there are no consistent mechanisms to measure the impact of homeownership on wealth inequality. Based on data from 1995 to 2018, this paper finds that the expansion of the homeownership rate in urban China was an equalizing force in the distribution of wealth from 1995 to 2008, driven by the increased homeownership and housing acquisition of low- and moderate-income households (LMIs) during the era of housing reform in the 1990s. The forces were exogenous and dominated by a redistributive logic. In the post-reform era after 2008, the decline in the homeownership rate led to a concentration of wealth distribution that was driven by the widening wealth gap between owners and non-owners, which represented an endogenous market force. The results indicate that there was an apparent discontinuity of the trends of homeownership and wealth inequality because new immigrants could not afford the price of housing in the cities. The wealth position of the middle and lower classes (mainly new immigrant non-owners) was crippled, not only by the inaccessibility of homeownership, but also by the reinforcing effect of the increase in housing prices. This study reveals the different mechanisms of homeownership on wealth inequality and the policy implications for the redistributive effects of the allocation of housing resources.     

Losing the future: Household wealth from urban housing demolition and children's human capital in China

Some literature observes the negative but not very significant effect of household wealth growth on children's educational outcomes. This surprising finding is not easily reconciled with the traditional explanation that relaxed economic constraints caused by wealth growth can promote human capital accumulation. This paper proposes an alternative explanation for the causal relationship between wealth growth and human capital, which could be negative: individuals tend to reduce human capital investment following the decline in their labor supply induced by wealth growth, given that investing in human capital is mainly for employment competitiveness. This explanation is supported by evidence from the case of urban housing demolition in China, in which affected households could obtain substantial wealth growth by considerable demolition compensation thanks to the real estate boom in China. Specifically, using two nationally representative datasets, we find that Chinese households that have experienced demolition relatively have more wealth, less labor supply, lower propensity to accumulate children's human capital, and consequently, have children with lower educational achievement. These results suggest that China's economy may be losing its momentum because of the decline in labor supply and human capital accumulation brought about by the ongoing large-scale urban housing demolition.     

The impact of the rise and collapse of Japan's housing price bubble on households’ lifetime utility

This study estimates the impact of the dramatic changes in housing prices during Japan's bubble from the late 1980s to the 1990s on households’ asset accumulation and utility over their life cycle. We construct a life-cycle model explaining households’ consumption/saving and housing decisions under collateral and borrowing constraints. We estimate this model using data from the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES), which includes data on households’ housing wealth estimated from objective information. Using the estimated model, we then conduct a counterfactual simulation in which we assume that housing prices remained constant during the bubble period. Doing so allows us to quantify the gains/losses of lifetime utility due to the housing price boom and bust. We find that 72.2% of the households experienced an average decrease in lifetime utility equivalent to 5.7% of lifetime income. On average, Japan's housing price boom and bust caused a loss in lifetime utility equivalent to 4.7% of lifetime income. Moreover, we compare the impact of the housing price bubble across cohorts and find that the impact was greatest for those who experienced the bubble at ages 35–45.     

Housing inequality and housing poverty in urban China in the late 1990s

This paper discusses housing inequality and housing poverty in urban China in the late 1990s, using original household surveys. Focuses are on the distributive implications of the privatization of public-owned housing and the wave of rural–urban migration. Estimates of the imputed rent function for owned housing purchased at discount prices indicates that meritocracy and political credentialism work differently as determinants of housing inequality. The paper confirms that there has been a large disparity in housing conditions between urban and migrant households, and that a new type of housing poverty has been emerging among migrant households.     

Expenditure patterns and elasticities of rural households sampled in two communal areas of KwaZulu-Natal

Expenditure patterns among a sample of 99 rural households in two communal districts in KwaZulu-Natal were investigated to determine the potential impact of a widespread income shock on household expenditure. The results showed expenditure elasticities of close to unity for food. Low elasticities were found for staple foods. Elasticities for meat, meat products and poultry were close to unity, while horticultural products showed the greatest potential for demand growth within the food category. Of the statistically significant commodity categories, expenditure elasticities for durables, housing and transport were more than double those estimated for the aggregate food category. For consumer items, the district expenditure elasticities were estimated to be 0,76 and 0,71, while expenditure on social obligations would not increase with rural incomes. Wealthier households (the top expenditure decile) have a greater propensity for increased expenditure on transport, while poorer households show a greater propensity for increased expenditure on housing and durables. Although agriculture has the potential to generate widespread growth in rural incomes, the preference for manufactured goods casts some doubt on the strength of consumption multipliers for locally produced farm and non-farm goods in rural KwaZulu-Natal.     

University education,homeownership and housing wealth

We utilise the implementation of the 1999 higher education expansion in China as a natural experiment to examine the relationship between university educational attainment, homeownership and housing wealth. Using data from the 2018 China Family Panel Studies, results from our preferred models, which correct for endogeneity, suggest that having a university qualification generates a 3.5–6.3 percentage points increase in the probability of homeownership and a 24.3–51.1 percentage points increase in total housing wealth. We also find that holding a university qualification increases the number of houses one owns and housing wealth for those whose housing wealth is above the median. We find that self-reported social status and entitlement to superannuation are channels through which higher education affects homeownership and housing wealth and that financial literacy is a channel through which higher education affects housing wealth. We find considerable heterogeneity in the impact of higher education on housing outcomes across gender, family income levels, parent education and between urban and rural areas.     

Wealthy Hand‐to‐Mouth Households in China

The wealthy hand‐to‐mouth are households who are poor in liquid wealth (e.g. cash and checking accounts) and rich in illiquid wealth (e.g. housing and retirement accounts), while the poor hand‐to‐mouth are poor in both liquid and illiquid wealth. Data from the China Household Finance Survey reveal the following facts about the country’s wealthy hand‐to‐mouth. First, they represent the majority of the hand‐to‐mouth households in China. Second, they have different wealth portfolios and demographic features from the poor hand‐to‐mouth. Finally, they have larger consumption responses to income fluctuations than non‐hand‐to‐mouth households, after controlling for endogeneity, income, hand‐to‐mouth status and other household characteristics.     

Housing wealth changes and entrepreneurship: Evidence from urban China

This paper studies the impact of household-level housing wealth changes on entrepreneurship in urban China. Exploiting the 2011–2015 China Household Finance Survey, we control for lagged proxies for wealth, city-by-year fixed effects, and other household attributes and directly estimate the magnitude of homeowner's response to housing capital gains net of home maintenance and upgrading expenditures. We also instrument for housing wealth changes with structural breaks in city housing price trend. We find that a 10,000 RMB increase in housing wealth increases the propensity of a household becoming a business owner by about 0.7 percentage points in IV estimation. In addition, we provide new evidence for underlying channels that housing capital gains alleviate household credit constraints, reduce risk aversion and increase awareness of financial information.     

Home value misestimation and household behavior: Evidence from China

Households often make errors when self-assessing their housing wealth. By using the Chinese Households Finance Survey, we show that Chinese urban households systematically overestimate their home value. This bias is significantly related to household consumption: a one standard deviation increase in the extent of estimation bias is associated with a 10% increase in household consumption. Our main results are robust against a variety of robustness checks, e.g., taking into account the expectations of future home price, using the interviewee's estimation as the instrumental variable for the household self-estimation, implementing the hedonic model on an external data source to assess real homevalue, etc.. Further, we show that overestimated households are more likely to take risk in financial market, and have a larger amount of immediate and conspicuous consumption. These findings have policy implications for the recent debate about property tax, indicating the unintended consequences of property tax through providing more precise information about home value.     

Family structure and home ownership: Evidence from China

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.     

Housing price and household savings rates: evidence from China

This article investigates the effect of house prices on household savings rates in urban China employing the 2002 and 2007 data of the Chinese Households Income Project (CHIP). We find that the rapid appreciation of house prices cannot explain high Chinese households’ savings rates and the rising of Chinese savings rates. On the contrary, we find a negative relationship between house prices and household savings rates for home renters and homeowners. We do not find any evidence of ‘savings for housing purchase’ for young home renters when house prices increase. Their savings rates declined during housing market booms in recent 10?years. Savings rates of homeowners possessing multiple housing have decreased more because of ‘the pure housing wealth effects.’     

Indicators of rural inequality

There are gradations of poverty even in the poorest societies. This essay explores indicators that measure wealth differences between households in the same community. Ethnographic and other literature has been surveyed, to provide examples from major Third World areas. The most important single indicator is control of land, followed by other productive resources — capital equipment (tractors, ploughs), consumer durables, income (farm and non-farm) and livestock. Non-productive indicators include housing, consumer goods, fuel, ceremonial expenditure and diet. Methodological problems are examined, and the essay concludes with representative case studies that illustrate effective and specific use of indicators.     

Migration and household investment in rural China

In this paper, we demonstrate how household investment is affected by participation in migration in rural China. We both describe investment patterns across different regions of China and by households with different experiences with migration. We then describe a set of hypotheses about the relationship between migration and investment, and test the hypotheses using household data that we collected in rural China in 2000. We find that in areas with median incomes that are more than twice the poverty line, migration is associated with investment in housing and other consumer durables that is 20% higher than the average. We find no evidence of a link between migration and productive investment.     

日本实施《家电再生利用法》解析

在战后日本经济高速增长时期,电视、冰箱和洗衣机被称为"三大件",并开始向普通日本家庭普及。此后,随着日本经济的发展及国民生活水平的提高,更多种类的家电产品被生产和销售。时至今日,包括"三大件"及空调等在内的家电产品已经成为普通家庭的生活必需品。与此同时,废旧家电数量也逐年上升,为了促进废旧家电中有用资源的再利用,减少废弃物的排放,构建循环型经济社会,1998年6月日本制定了《家电再生利用法》,自2001年4月开始实施。对日本实施《家电再生利用法》的成效进行分析,可以对中国发展循环经济、构建环境友好型社会提供有益借鉴。     

Housing Wealth and Household Portfolios in an Ageing Society

Summary  Housing is one of the most important consumption goods, also for the elderly. For owner–occupiers, housing equity is moreover usually the most important asset in their investment portfolio, and hence, household wealth of the elderly is extremely sensitive to developments on the housing market. This panel paper surveys the literature on housing as a consumption good and asset category over the life cycle and moreover presents stylised facts on the housing market behavior of Dutch households over their life cycle. Although many of the issues discussed also occur in other countries, the Dutch housing market is used as a background o the review.      

Income Uncertainty and Wealth Accumulation: How Precautionary are Taiwanese Households?*

To assess how recent job loss impacts wealth accumulation of Taiwanese households, the present study investigates the empirical relevance of the precautionary saving motive to explain measures of wealth during the past 2 decades. This study demonstrates that households facing increased transitory shock accumulate increased amounts of financial and housing wealth, whereas permanent shocks cause households to accumulate housing wealth only. Empirical results suggest an important policy implication: households in Taiwan will save less when social insurance policies are effective in reducing future transitory and permanent shocks to household income.     

China's growing but slowing inequality of household wealth, 2013–2018: A challenge to ‘common prosperity’?

By examining the period 2013–2018, this paper follows up a previous one which analysed the increase in the inequality of China's wealth per capita over the period 2002–2013. It finds that the Gini coefficient, having risen rapidly over the earlier period, continued to grow but did so more slowly in the later period, at the national level and in both urban and rural China. Counterfactual analysis identifies the lower rate of house price inflation as an important reason for the slowdown. Policies and policy options are examined, both directly on wealth inequality and indirectly through control of house price inflation. Nevertheless, the rising inequality of wealth per capita among households does indeed pose a challenge to the achievement of ‘common prosperity’ in China. It deserves more policy attention.     

Consumption based estimates of urban Chinese growth

This paper estimates the household income growth rates implied by food demand in a sample of urban Chinese households in 1993–2005. Our estimates, based on Engel curves for food consumption, indicate an average per capita income growth of 6.8% per year in 1993–2005. This figure is slightly larger than the 5.9% per year obtained by deflating nominal incomes by the CPI. We attribute this discrepancy to a small bias in the CPI, which is of a similar magnitude to the one often associated with the CPI in the United States. This result supports the view that Chinese price statistics are reliable. Our estimates indicate stronger gains among poorer households, suggesting that urban inflation up to 2005 in China was “pro-poor,” in the sense that the increase in the cost of living for poorer households was smaller than for the average one.