Housing expenditure and home purchasing behaviors of rural-urban migrants in China

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the housing behaviors of rural-urban migrant workers in China and the associated socioeconomic determinants.Design/methodology/approachThe authors developed a model to empirically identify the effects of income in multi-dimension, destination expected to live in the future, local housing policy, and a set of individual characteristics on housing-related expenditure and home purchase of rural-urban migrants. A survey data collected by the Development Research Center of the State Council was employed.FindingsThe results showed that migrants’ expecting place to live in the future is a significant factor influencing their housing-related decisions. Including migrant workers in local housing security system of the host city could also significantly improve their incentive to purchase home. Income jointly with income stability affects migrants’ housing-related expenditure positively, but has an insignificant effect on home purchases in host city. The cost to buy home in city is still far away from migrant’s affordability is a likely explanation.Originality/valueTo the best of our knowledge, this is the first study aiming to investigate rural-urban migrants’ housing behavior in host city and to empirically identify the associated influencing factors.