Research on urban residents’ acquisitions of second sets of housing from a life-course perspective

Abstract

This study examines how macro-social and micro-social and economic factors at different life stages affect people’s decisions about purchasing secondary residential property. I suggest several possible explanations, such as cohort opportunity, property market opportunity, elite advantage, family resource investment, and rational choice. Using discrete-time event history analysis, I look into the data collected from investigation of the housing conditions of urban residents of Guangzhou in 2010 and find that factors such as elite advantage and family resource investment become much more significant in purchasing a second property, while the impact of cohort opportunity and work unit subsidies diminishes. Housing marketization has changed property wealth accumulation in China from institutional resource distribution to market resource accumulation. It has changed housing purchase means from relying on work unit support to depending on personal and family financial capability. The early stage of market-oriented reform was able to offer property ownership opportunities to different social strata; however, deepening marketization and wealth redistribution have worsened housing inequality among different social groups as well as within the younger cohorts. Any future housing reform should endeavor to prevent further housing polarization between the rich and the poor.