The temporal change of housing inequality in urban China

Abstract

This paper reveals temporal changes of housing inequality in housing space and access in urban China and explores the effects over time of underlying socioeconomic factors (education, occupation, industrial type, and migration status). Household-level micro data from 2000 and 2010 of the national population censuses were pooled. Our results showed that inequality in per capita space increased during the new century’s first decade, both within and between social classes. Regression analysis and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition showed that although the changes in these socioeconomic factors partially explain the enlarged inequality in per capita space, the changes in these factors’ returns were the main causes. For housing access, there were no signs of prioritization in the allocations of state-subsidized housing for those in the low-ranked social strata. Further, the roles of education, occupation, and monopoly industry in accessibility to subsidized housing gradually weakened, and the allocation of subsidized housing began covering other households besides local urban residents.