Do house prices squeeze marriages in China?

Abstract

This study reviews the threshold effect of house prices (HPs) on marriage (MR) in China by utilizing a panel threshold regression. The findings indicate that HPs have a positive impact on MR when the price is below the threshold value. Homeownership is an extremely important factor in MR in China, and MR without housing is considered incomplete. However, HPs have a negative effect on MR when the price is higher than the threshold value. Unemployment and female education have a negative effect on MR, while GDP per capita has a positive effect. These results are supported by the duration model, which shows that as HPs increase, the rate of MR decreases. The study makes a contribution on the asymmetric impact of high HPs on MR in China in the two regimes. The paper offers insight into the economic outlook on HPs and MR driven by societal and institutional changes, such as privatization and state ownership of enterprises, that have changed marriage behavior. Increasing HPs slow MR and may have a more serious impact on China than on other countries. The government should balance housing supply and demand by enhancing antimonopoly supervision in the private market. The government should establish policy measures to meet housing demand and create incentives to wed, which can relieve competition in marriage markets. Diversified investment, in turn, can control HPs.

House Prices and Marriage in Spain

“…There are several theoretical models explaining the potential relationship between house prices and marriage. Here, we follow the duration model [29,[31][32][33]. Rising house prices can have a negative effect on marriage, which is in line with the budget constraint on household consumption.…”

“…However, all of these studies consider microdata, and, to the best of our knowledge, only two have examined the link between house prices and marriage using panel data from a sample of a country's provinces [1,29]. This aggregate perspective seems vital, because, in many countries, housing markets and policies have strong regional features.…”

“…Gholipour and Farzanegan [1] considered a panel of provinces of Iran over a period of nine years (2002-2010) to apply the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator, and found a negative relationship between housing costs and the marriage rate. Su et al [29] reviewed the threshold effect of house prices on marriage in 31 provinces of China, utilizing a panel threshold regression. Nevertheless, both Iran and China are particular cases with very specific idiosyncrasies (a Muslim-dominant and communist country, respectively); therefore, these results cannot easily be extrapolated to other countries, especially if there are important cultural differences (which also imply different gender roles).…”

Can Industrial Integration Improve the Sustainability of Grain Security?

“…In the unidentifiable test, the estimated coefficients all passed the significance test. At the same time, according to the method [40], this paper also uses the lagging period of the industrial integration variable as an instrumental variable to carry out the two stage least square method test. The regression results in Column 2 of Table 4 can still reach the same conclusion.…”

The Impact of Housing Prices on Birth Rates in China

“…Clark, Yi and Zhang (2020) analyzed a panel data of 35 large cities from 2013 to 2017 in China and found that there was an approximately 0.94-percentage-point decrease in the probability of having a child under two with a 1 percent increase in housing prices. By conducting a panel threshold model, Su et al (2020) found that housing prices had a negative impact on marriage when the price was above the threshold value.…”