Homeownership in urban China: An empirical study of the Housing Provident Fund

Abstract

The relentless effort of the government to control rising house prices in urban China have differential impacts on the various segments of the population due to their differential demand for homeownership. Hence, it is important for the government to have a better understanding of the underlying demand for homeownership, especially with respect to the different demographic variables and accessibility to loans and housing providence funds (HPF), in order to provide a more comprehensive strategy and to address some of the equity issues that may arise from these countermeasures. To this effect, this paper develop and estimate a binary logit model of homeownership and accessibility to HPF loans using a variety of demographic variables. Our findings document that high school graduates are less likely to own a house while people with longer duration of employment and households who are married and with children are more likely to own a house. The results also show that gender, marital status, education level, high annual income and duration of employment are significantly related to HPF loan use for homeownership.