Gender differences in the housing decisions of married-couple families: evidence from urban China

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the role of gender of the household decision maker in the housing decisions of married-couple families. Using data across urban China from the China Labour-force Dynamic Survey during 2012–2016, the paper shows that married-couple families with female decision makers have higher rates of homeownership. We infer that housing provides more psychological and financial security for women than men. In addition, female decision makers tend to buy smaller houses and have higher returns on housing assets, which could be caused by the fact that female decision makers are more concerned about the members of their nuclear family, especially their kids. The main results are robust to control for the effects of the socioeconomic status of household members. These findings aid in understanding the role of gender in the housing market and offer guidance for better policies to boost a more efficient housing supply.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender differences
• family decision maker
• housing decisions
• homeownership
• housing characteristics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ Report source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-23/household-net-worth-in-u-s-hits-record-on-surging-home-values.

² Data source: “China Household Wealth Survey Report 2019” by the China Economic Trends Research Institute, Economic Daily.

³ Source: Reserve Bank of India, The Indian Household Finance Landscape, 2017.

⁴ The CLDS distinguishes between five categories of marital status: single, first married, divorced, remarried, and widowed; we regarded first marriage and remarried as “married”.

⁵ An officially registered head of household is required under China’s Hukou system. Most families register the husband as the household head. Thus, this social norm does not identify who plays a major role in family decision-making.

⁶ See detailed definitions of all variables in Table A1 in the Appendix.

⁷ Some families own partial homeownership and partial property rights because they paid part of housing prices during the market-oriented housing reform initiated in 1994.

⁸ There are many different sales and tax policies for newly built houses and second-hand houses in China.

⁹ Houses are usually sold by their house areas in China, including an inside area and shared public areas.

¹⁰ See “Small Homes Can Offer Big Returns”, https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/mortgages/mortgage-rates-small-homes-big-returns/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71703006, 72174119, 71774057), MOE Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (17YJC790155), and Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (LQ20G030020)