ABSTRACT
This article investigates the impact of homeownership on life satisfaction for urban migrants in China. By utilizing three waves of the China Labor-Force Dynamics Survey data from 2012 to 2016, we find that homeownership has a positive and significant effect on life satisfaction of urban migrants. This effect remains robust with different model specifications. In addition, this effect is mainly concentrated in those aged above 38, or at the top quartile of income distribution among migrants, or residing in the east coastal region. We also show that the positive effect of homeownership remains when the possibility of its endogeneity is tackled by instrumental variable estimation.
Acknowledgments
We acknowledge the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 71603061), the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (Nos. 2019A1515011649), the Fund Projects of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (No. 18ZD01), the Ministry of Education of China Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (Project No. 20YJC790057) and the Foundation of South China Institute of Fortune Management Research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 There are 592, 970 and 796 migrant households in 2012, 2014 and 2016 waves, respectively.
2 We present the estimated parameter values of the key independent variable across columns and omit other control variables to conserve space. The results with other variables are available upon request.
3 The east region includes Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Liaoning, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong, and Guangdong. The middle region includes Shanxi, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan, Hubei and Hunan. The west region includes Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia.