Zhang, Jialei (2023) China’s Housing Financialization and Urban Young Adults’ Accessing Homeownership. Master thesis.
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Abstract
Housing is one of the basic needs of people. After the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008, urban housing prices around the world soared, and urban young adults with independent housing needs but low affordability were facing difficulties in acquiring housing. The housing crisis of urban young adults has become a prominent manifestation of the general housing crisis. However, for urban young adults in China, access to homeownership is still a common choice for them to gain a foothold in the cities they live in. Inspired by the housing crisis of urban young adults, this thesis wants to explore the allocation of housing resources and residents’, especially urban young adults’ accessing homeownership. To do that, this thesis combines the theory of housing financialization with the shift in housing attributes, which include social welfare, commodity and financial good, to analyze the reform of China's housing system. After the analysis of history, it proposes that urban housing in China has complex multiple attributes, including social welfare, commodity, and investment goods, and its attribute composition changes with the reform of related policy systems. The changes in housing attributes have been affecting the supply of housing resources through the exercise to allocate housing resources and the subject of allocation. Three main factors can be found in this process to influence the acquisition of homeownership in China: labor market characteristics, institutional and household characteristics, and household assets with housing finance characteristics. In the empirical analysis part, based on the social survey data of CHFS and CGSS, this thesis uses a binary logistic model as the benchmark model to further explore the changing trends and patterns of urban young adults’ accessing homeownership. The analysis found that the current spatial differences have become one of the most influential factors affecting the accessing of homeownership among urban young adults. And the higher the degree of comprehensive economic and social development of the cities, the lower the possibility of urban young adults to be homeowners. In terms of accumulation factors, the paths and relative importance of intergenerational accumulation on accessing homeownership for young people has changed due to the process of housing financialization, and the intergenerational accumulation of assets has become more important for accessing homeownership than other aspects. In the last part, the thesis concludes with five key findings and further explores the issues related to housing financialization, housing attributes and housing equity. In addition, it argues that the discussion of housing attributes is important for the operationalization of housing financialization as a theoretical aspect; housing financialization should be considered as an objective and realistic factor; the multiple attributes of housing itself, as well as its proper value and use should be highlighted. At the same time, housing financialization has enhanced the asset attributes of housing, affecting the asset accumulation of households for at least two generations, and to some extent widening the development gap between urban regions; the rural-urban or urban-urban migrations and the urban young adults have become the major vulnerable groups in the urban housing market. Due to data limitations, the analysis of the spatial disparities in this thesis and the mechanism of the relationships between housing attributes and urban young adults’ accessing homeownership are rather crude. Further exploration of pathways, through which housing attributes affect the accessing homeownership of urban youth, may be done through qualitative research methods at smaller scales.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
|---|---|
| Degree programme: | Society, Sustainability and Planning (MSc Socio-spatial Planning) |
| Supervisor: | Roo, Gert de |
| Date Deposited: | 10 Oct 2023 13:32 |
| Last Modified: | 11 Oct 2023 12:21 |
| URI: | https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/4406 |
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