Housing Price,Housing Wealth And Human Capital

Since the market-oriented reform of housing distribution system in 1998,China's real estate market has entered a rising channel,and the housing price has risen sharply.In particular,the housing prices of second-tier cities have increased by 3.92 times since 2003,and those of first-tier cities such as Beijing,Shanghai and shenzhen have increased by as much as five times.As one of the macroeconomic variables,the fluctuation of the housing price will affect the overall operation of the macro economy and have an important impact on the economic and social development of a country.With the continuous improvement of the marketization degree of China's real estate market,the rapid development of the real estate has become an important factor driving the fluctuation of China's economic cycle.The sustained rise in housing price has had a significant impact on many sectors of the economy.At the same time,according to the China household wealth survey report in 2017,the proportion of housing wealth in China's total household wealth is as high as 65.99%.The increase of housing wealth brought by the rise of housing price has become the most important reason for the increase of per capita wealth of the household,and housing wealth has become the most important component of the household wealth in China.As an important determinant of economic growth,human capital is the main source of a country's economic development and social progress.Human capital is mainly reflected in the quantity and quality of labors,and the quality of labor is mainly reflected in the education level and health status of labors.As far as China is concerned,with the decline of the fertility rate and the aggravation of the aging trend in recent years,the decline of the working-age population has become a reality that we have to face.Therefore,while increasing the quantity of labor supply,it is the key to ensure the sustainable development of China's economy to give full play to the efficiency of labors and improve the quality of labors.Specifically,we should not only increase the quantity of labor by increasing the fertility rate and the labor supply of the elderly,but also improve the quality of labors by increasing the investment in education and improving the health.It is found that the quantity and quality of human capital in China are influenced by multiple factors.In recent years,Whether the continuous rise of housing price in China and the increase of housing wealth of households with homeowners will affect human capital? What are the different effects on the quantity and quality of labors? The study of the influence of housing price and housing wealth on human capital is helpful to understand the role of the development of real estate market in China's economic development,and to provide more explanations for the change of human capital.This paper uses micro-household survey data from a variety of sources and adopts a variety of measurement methods to identify the impact of housing price and houing wealth changes on different human capital measurement indicators,and analyzes their internal mechanisms.The theoretical significance of this study is that it is helpful to understand the microeconomic impact of housing price changes in developing countries during the period of rapid growth and transition,especially to supplement the relevant research on China,and also to increase the understanding of the influencing factors of human capital in China.The practical significance is that the research of this paper is helpful for us to comprehensively and deeply understand the impact of the development of real estate market on human capital.Prompting the government in maintaining the healthy development of the real estate market;Meanwhile,perfecting our country's one child policy,improving the willingness of women of childbearing age to breed,strengthening the attention to the elderly,improving the elderly labor participation rate on the basis of perfect old-age security,increasing spending on health of residents,and improving awareness of the health of the residents.The paper is divided into six chapters,the first chapter is an introduction,the second chapter is the review of related research mainly from the theoretical model of human capital and the empirical research of housing prices,housing wealth and human capital.Through literature review,we found the following problems: first,housing price and housing wealth have a great impact on the economic behavior and social welfare of households or individuals in China,and the micro impact of housing prices and housing wealth should be paid attention to;Second,The research of human capital has abundant theoretical support,and the human capital is affected by many factors.Third,there is still a lack of research on the causal relationship between housing price,housing wealth and human capital.Therefore,the remaining chapters are arranged as follows:Chapter 3 takes the prosperity of China's real estate market in recent years as the background to investigate the impact of housing wealth change driven by housing market variations on homeowners' fertility decisions in China.Our empirical analysis uses nationally representative data from the China Family Panel Study(2010,2012,2014 and 2016).The study found that a 100,000 yuan increase in a family's housing wealth decreases the likelihood that a woman gives birth by 0.38 of a percentage point or 4.6% in the following two years,with an implied housing wealth elasticity of fertility at-0.1.Further,we provide evidence in support of three mechanisms behind the negative fertility effects of housing wealth.First,we find little evidence for a strong positive wealth effect from housing price increases on fertility,but there is a significant positive wealth effect on household education expenditure,probably due to a shift in preferences from child quantity to quality associated with housing wealth increases.Second,we show that the negative fertility effects are driven by women who are likely future home buyers,indicating that rising housing prices seem to have large negative effects on fertility from a higher cost of living in the future.Third,we also find that a housing wealth increase has a substitution effect on the expected old-age support from children,probably leading to a decrease in the old-age security motive for childbearing.Overall,our results suggest that the negative cost effect and the old-age security effect dominate any positive wealth effect from housing price growth in the context of China.Additionally,the heterogeneity test found that the increase of housing wealth would lead to the decline of the total fertility rate,the negative fertility responses are also observed for all subgroups with different numbers of previous children,including those who decide to have a first child.We also find that women with higher incomes,more education,no siblings,and living in urban areas are more responsive to housing wealth increases in terms of having a child.Chapter 4 mainly investigates the wealth effect of rising house prices on the labor supply of the elderly.Based on the panel data of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal survey(CHARLS)in 2011,2013 and 2015,this chapter adopts Difference in Difference model(DID)and first difference model(FD)to evaluate the impact of the increase in housing wealth caused by the rising housing price on the labor supply of the elderly.The results show that the influence of the increase of housing wealth on the labor supply of the elderly has difference in gender and urban-rural.Specifically,the increase in housing wealth caused by the rise in housing prices significantly reduces the labor participation rate,working hours and working status of the elderly women homeowners.However,compared with the elderly women homeowners in rural areas,the wealth effect of the elderly women homeowners in urban areas is stronger.At the same time,the wealth effect only affects the labor supply of elderly men homeowners in urban,but has no effect on the labor supply of elderly men homeowners in rural areas.The main reason for this conclusion is that,on the one hand,there is a tradition of "men working outside and women working inside" in our country.Men's work is generally stable for a long time,while women's work is relatively flexible,which makes the female labor supply more vulnerable to the impact of housing wealth.On the other hand,there are differences between urban and rural areas in the development of the real estate market and the labor supply of the elderly in China.The real estate development in rural areas is relatively slow,and the labor participation rate of the elderly is always high and changes little due to the lack of sound old-age security among rural residents.Chapter 5 mainly discusses the impact of housing price fluctuation on urban residents' health.On the basis of analyzing the influence mechanism of housing price fluctuation on residents' health,this paper verifies the mechanism and examines the ways of housing price fluctuation affecting residents' health.This chapter investigates the impact of housing prices on the mental and physical health of urban residents by using the data of China Family Panel Study(CFPS)from 2010 to 2014.The results show that housing prices have different effects on the psychological and physical health of urban residents.The rise in housing prices has a negative impact on residents' mental health.Due to the wealth effect and regional economic development effect,the rising housing price will significantly improve the self-rated health of urban residents and reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases.It is also found that the influence of house price on health mainly comes from wealth effect,mortgage slave effect and regional economic development effect.Specifically,housing price rose for physical health beneficial effects are mostly found in residents who have more than two set of houses,have one larger housing,have higher housing wealth,or without unmarried adult children.The beneficial effect for other residents does not exist or is very small,so that house prices have a wealth effect to health.Secondly,for those who do not own a house,have one set of house but with a small per capita housing area or have a lower housing wealth,the negative impact of housing price on mental health is stronger,indicating that residents with a greater rigid demand for housing are more subject to the mortgage slave effect of rising housing price.Third,compared with residents in low-income areas or second-and third-tier cities,residents in high-income areas or first-tier cities have less negative impact on mental health and more positive impact on physical health from housing price,which is consistent with the effect of housing price on regional economic development.Finally,through the investigation of individual health and medical behavior,this paper analyzes the influence of housing price on health,and finds that the rise of housing price will significantly improve the health and medical utilization of residents,increase the probability of physical exercise,and reduce the behavior of smoking and drinking,which provides empirical support for the beneficial influence of housing price on physical health.Chapter 6 summarizes this paper,links the research results of each chapter,and puts forward suggestions for reference,expands the research direction and research plan.The possible innovations of this paper are mainly reflected in the following aspects:First,this paper is the first to systematically study housing price,housing wealth and human capital by using modern economic analysis methods.As an emerging market country,the development of real estate market,the status of human capital and the relationship between them are particular.Based on the research experience of developed countries,this paper integrates the economic,social and cultural characteristics of China,which provides more effective empirical evidence to explore the impact of the real estate market on the microeconomy and improve the human capital in China.In addition,the human capital in this paper reflects the quantity and quality of human capital,including fertility,labor supply for the elderly,education level and health status,and the research on causal effect and mechanism analysis is also lacking in the existing literature.Second,chapter 3 focuses on the impact of housing price and housing wealth change on female fertility.It is the first literature to analyze the impact of housing wealth change on female fertility from the perspective of housing price change in the real estate market in developing countries.This chapter also innovatively puts forward the old-age security effect with Chinese characteristics,conducts theoretical prediction and empirical test on the mechanism,and verifies the QQ theory.Different from developed countries,the main channels are salient cost effect,and old-age security effect,while the positive wealth effect is weak.The research has improved understanding of the fertility transition in developing countries and laid a more solid foundation for the content of population policies in developing countries.Moreover,the empirical results of this paper provide empirical support for the quality-quantity tradeoff model,and we find that the rise of housing price may be an important channel to promote the demographic transition and improve human capital in the transition countries.Third,the fourth chapter is the first research on the impact of housing wealth effect on labor supply for the elderly in China.When the existing literature analyzes the microscopic influence of housing price,it emphasizes and verifies the cost effect and seldom studies and finds the wealth effect.In China,there is a high rate of housing ownership among the elderly,so it is more effective to explore the wealth effect of rising housing price with the elderly as the main body in this chapter.In addition,different from western developed countries,China's retirement system is divided between urban and rural areas,and urban and rural residents face significantly different retirement systems.Moreover,for urban residents working in the formal sector,there is a gender gap in the legal retirement age.Based on this,when verifying the influence of real estate wealth effect on labor supply for the elderly,this chapter conducts group regression of samples according to the differences between urban and rural areas and gender,and provides targeted suggestions for policy makers on the basis of guaranteeing the reliability of the research.Fourth,chapter 5 examines the impact of housing price changes on residents' health conditions.There are still few domestic studies on how China's macroeconomic operation conditions affect residents' health.In addition,different from the existing domestic literature that mainly focuses on the physiological health of individuals,this chapter expands the connotation of residents' health and uses a number of subjective and objective indicators to respectively measure individuals' mental health and physical health.Mental health included three variables: CES-D,depression,and unhappiness.Physical health included five variables: subjective self-rated health,prevalence of the past two weeks,chronic illness,body mass index,and overweight.This chapter examines the mechanism of housing price's influence on health through a variety of group regression comparative analysis.For developing countries like China,although there are positive wealth effect and regional economic development effect,the negative mortgage slave effect dominates.In addition,the influence channels of housing price on the physical health of residents is also investigated.