Parent- or self-reliance? Understanding young homeowners’ housing quality in Beijing from an intergenerational and dynamic perspective

Abstract

Parental support increasingly influences young people’s housing outcomes. Using OLS models, this study examines the relative effects of parental and own socioeconomic status and political resources on young homeowners’ housing quality and their temporal dynamics in Beijing, China. We find that the market transition theory has explanatory power for both generations. However, the socioeconomic status of parents outweighs that of young homeowners in influencing their multifaceted housing qualities. These housing qualities are also positively associated with parents’, but negatively with the young homeowners’ political resources. This indicates power persistence theory does not stand for the younger generation, but parental political advantages derived from the socialist system are remanent in shaping contemporary youth’s housing stratification. The more recent the acquisition of homeownership by young adult children, the stronger the positive influence of parental attributes, but the weaker the influence of the younger generation’s own attributes. This demonstrates the intergenerational reproduction of housing stratification and socio-spatial inequality becomes more pronounced as housing affordability declines.

Keywords:

• Housing quality
• intergenerational support
• market transition theory
• power persistence theory
• temporal dynamics
• Homeownership

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the five anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments, constructive suggestions, and thoughtful considerations. Their insights have greatly enhanced the quality of this paper.

Disclosure statement

We have no conflict of interest to declare.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yanji Zhang

Yanji Zhang is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology at Fuzhou University in China. His research areas include urban sociology, socio-spatial inequalities, and crime geography.

Qiong He

Qiong He is a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Department of Urban Planning and Design, as well as the Social Infrastructure for Equity and Wellbeing (SIEW) Lab, University of Hong Kong. Her research interests primarily focus on housing studies, residential segregation and mobility, geographies of education, urban and regional studies.