Does housing liquidity matter? Housing property rights and labour market participation of older migrants in China

Abstract

This paper adds to the literature by identifying the effect of home ownership on rural-to-urban older migrants’ labour market participation in China. Using the 2016 wave of the China Migrants Dynamic Survey, we find that older migrants who do not own houses are more likely to participate in the labour market than home owners. To alleviate endogeneity caused by the potential sample selection problem, the propensity score matching method is employed. Our results imply that home ownership can be used as a type of precautionary/retirement savings for older migrants, especially for the ones lacking in financial security. We also show that older migrants owning houses with a higher level of liquidity are less likely to participate in the labour market. It indicates that liquidity may significantly affect the effectiveness for older migrants to use home ownership as precautionary/retirement savings.