IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/chinae/v30y2022i1p106-135.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Consumption‐Stimulating Effect of Public Rental Housing in China

Author

Listed:
  • Xiaokuai Shao
  • Yujin Cao
  • Yangchuan Teng
  • Jidong Chen
  • Liutang Gong

Abstract

China's public rental policy creates opportunities for poor households to rent apartments at low rental prices. In addition to such an impact, we argue that public rental housing increases the purchasing power of the poor and therefore enhances the income elasticity of consumption, i.e., the percentage of consumption increment due to a 1 percent increase in income. Based on a nationwide dataset from China, the Chinese Household Income Project 2018, we find that public rental housing significantly increases the marginal impact of household disposable income on consumption. Specifically, our analysis suggests that public rental apartments could increase the income elasticity of consumption demand by 18 percent among all rental households and by 24 percent among rental households with below‐average income. We also find that the effect of public rental housing on income elasticity of consumption is stronger for service consumption than for nonservice consumption. These results suggest that a well designed public rental policy could not only promote consumption in favor of the service industry but also alleviate the undesirable consequences of the unbalanced consumption structure caused by income inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Xiaokuai Shao & Yujin Cao & Yangchuan Teng & Jidong Chen & Liutang Gong, 2022. "The Consumption‐Stimulating Effect of Public Rental Housing in China," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 30(1), pages 106-135, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:chinae:v:30:y:2022:i:1:p:106-135
    DOI: 10.1111/cwe.12403
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12403
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/cwe.12403?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Zan Yang & Ying Fan & Liqing Zhao, 2018. "A Reexamination of Housing Price and Household Consumption in China: The Dual Role of Housing Consumption and Housing Investment," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 472-499, April.
    2. Charles Himmelberg & Christopher Mayer & Todd Sinai, 2005. "Assessing High House Prices: Bubbles, Fundamentals and Misperceptions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 67-92, Fall.
    3. le Blanc, David & Laferrere, Anne, 2001. "The Effect of Public Social Housing on Households' Consumption in France," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 429-455, December.
    4. Hanming Fang & Quanlin Gu & Wei Xiong & Li-An Zhou, 2016. "Demystifying the Chinese Housing Boom," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(1), pages 105-166.
    5. Shang-Jin Wei & Xiaobo Zhang, 2011. "The Competitive Saving Motive: Evidence from Rising Sex Ratios and Savings Rates in China," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(3), pages 511-564.
    6. Aditya Aladangady, 2017. "Housing Wealth and Consumption: Evidence from Geographically-Linked Microdata," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(11), pages 3415-3446, November.
    7. Olsen, Edgar O. & Barton, David M., 1983. "The benefits and costs of public housing in New York City," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 299-332, April.
    8. Waxman, Andrew & Liang, Yuanning & Li, Shanjun & Barwick, Panle Jia & Zhao, Meng, 2020. "Tightening belts to buy a home: Consumption responses to rising housing prices in urban China," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    9. Follain, James R. & Ling, David C., 1991. "The Federal Tax Subsidy to Housing and the Reduced Value of the Mortgage Interest Deduction," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 44(2), pages 147-168, June.
    10. Rebecca Diamond & Tim McQuade & Franklin Qian, 2019. "The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(9), pages 3365-3394, September.
    11. Todd Sinai & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2005. "Owner-Occupied Housing as a Hedge Against Rent Risk," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(2), pages 763-789.
    12. White, Michelle J. & White, Lawrence J., 1977. "The tax subsidy to owner-occupied housing: Who benefits?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 111-126, February.
    13. Henderson, J Vernon & Ioannides, Yannis M, 1983. "A Model of Housing Tenure Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(1), pages 98-113, March.
    14. Wong, Yue-Chim & Liu, Pak-Wai, 1988. "The distribution of benefits among public housing tenants in Hong Kong and related policy issues," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 1-20, January.
    15. Harding, John P. & Rosenthal, Stuart S. & Sirmans, C.F., 2007. "Depreciation of housing capital, maintenance, and house price inflation: Estimates from a repeat sales model," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 193-217, March.
    16. Yinger, John, 1981. "A Search Model of Real Estate Broker Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(4), pages 591-605, September.
    17. Atif Mian & Kamalesh Rao & Amir Sufi, 2013. "Household Balance Sheets, Consumption, and the Economic Slump," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(4), pages 1687-1726.
    18. Sinai, Todd & Waldfogel, Joel, 2005. "Do low-income housing subsidies increase the occupied housing stock?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(11-12), pages 2137-2164, December.
    19. Wu, Jing & Gyourko, Joseph & Deng, Yongheng, 2012. "Evaluating conditions in major Chinese housing markets," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 531-543.
    20. Iacus, Stefano M. & King, Gary & Porro, Giuseppe, 2011. "Multivariate Matching Methods That Are Monotonic Imbalance Bounding," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 106(493), pages 345-361.
    21. Cho, Sungwon, 2011. "Housing wealth effect on consumption: Evidence from household level data," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 192-194.
    22. John M. Quigley, 1998. "Urban Diversity and Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 127-138, Spring.
    23. Edward Glaeser & Wei Huang & Yueran Ma & Andrei Shleifer, 2017. "A Real Estate Boom with Chinese Characteristics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(1), pages 93-116, Winter.
    24. Kaplan, Greg & Mitman, Kurt & Violante, Giovanni L., 2020. "Non-durable consumption and housing net worth in the Great Recession: Evidence from easily accessible data," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    25. Jie Chen & Zan Yang & Ya Ping Wang, 2014. "The New Chinese Model of Public Housing: A Step Forward or Backward?," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(4), pages 534-550, June.
    26. Meng, Xin & Zhang, Junsen, 2001. "The Two-Tier Labor Market in Urban China: Occupational Segregation and Wage Differentials between Urban Residents and Rural Migrants in Shanghai," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 485-504, September.
    27. Iacus, Stefano M. & King, Gary & Porro, Giuseppe, 2012. "Causal Inference without Balance Checking: Coarsened Exact Matching," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 1-24, January.
    28. Follain, James R. & Ling, David C., 1991. "The Federal Tax Subsidy to Housing and the Reduced Value of the Mortgage Interest Deduction," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 44(2), pages 147-68, June.
    29. Weinberg, Daniel H. & Friedman, Joseph & Mayo, Stephen K., 1981. "Intraurban residential mobility: The role of transactions costs, market imperfections, and household disequilibrium," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 332-348, May.
    30. Imbens,Guido W. & Rubin,Donald B., 2015. "Causal Inference for Statistics, Social, and Biomedical Sciences," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521885881, January.
    31. Arvind Panagariya & Paul R. Portney & Robert M. Schwab (ed.), 1999. "environmental and public economics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1287.
    32. Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), 2015. "Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 5, number 5.
    33. Feler, Leo & Henderson, J. Vernon, 2011. "Exclusionary policies in urban development: Under-servicing migrant households in Brazilian cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 253-272, May.
    34. Feng Hu, 2013. "Homeownership and Subjective Wellbeing in Urban China: Does Owning a House Make You Happier?," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 110(3), pages 951-971, February.
    35. Brueckner, Jan K. & Lall, Somik V., 2015. "Cities in Developing Countries," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 1399-1455, Elsevier.
    36. Chen, Binkai & Yang, Xi & Zhong, Ninghua, 2020. "Housing demand and household saving rates in china: Evidence from a housing reform," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    37. Haurin, Donald R. & Gill, H. Leroy, 2002. "The Impact of Transaction Costs and the Expected Length of Stay on Homeownership," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 563-584, May.
    38. Weizeng Sun & Siqi Zheng & David M. Geltner & Rui Wang, 2017. "The Housing Market Effects of Local Home Purchase Restrictions: Evidence from Beijing," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 288-312, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Liang, Jing & Qiu, Jiehong & Wang, Xiangrui & Wu, Jikai & Yang, Sansi & Zhou, You, 2024. "Examining energy inequality: The impact of household wealth on heterogeneous response to temperatures," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    2. agarwal, shekhar & Gordon, Anna, 2022. "Complexities for the Indian Economy of China's Growing Technological Competence," OSF Preprints fk3r7, Center for Open Science.
    3. Guiwen Liu & Jiayue Zhao & Hongjuan Wu & Taozhi Zhuang, 2022. "Spatial Pattern of the Determinants for the Private Housing Rental Prices in Highly Dense Populated Chinese Cities—Case of Chongqing," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(12), pages 1-22, December.
    4. Ying Cao & Daichun Yi & Youqin Huang & Yang Zhu, 2024. "Mismatches between the Supply and Demand of Public Rental Housing in Chinese Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(19), pages 1-20, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shao, Xiaokuai & White, Alexander, 2021. "Outsiders, insiders and interventions in the housing market," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 110-134.
    2. Waxman, Andrew & Liang, Yuanning & Li, Shanjun & Barwick, Panle Jia & Zhao, Meng, 2020. "Tightening belts to buy a home: Consumption responses to rising housing prices in urban China," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    3. Piazzesi, M. & Schneider, M., 2016. "Housing and Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1547-1640, Elsevier.
    4. Hanming Fang & Long Wang & Yang Yang, 2022. "Housing Wealth and Online Consumer Behavior:Evidence from Xiong'an New Area in China," PIER Working Paper Archive 22-021, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    5. Li, Cheng & Zhang, Ying, 2021. "How does housing wealth affect household consumption? Evidence from macro-data with special implications for China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    6. Dong Cheng, 2021. "Housing boom and non-housing consumption: evidence from urban households in China," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(6), pages 3271-3313, December.
    7. Meng, Lina & Peng, Lu & Zhou, Yinggang, 2023. "Do housing booms reduce fertility intentions? Evidence from the new two-child policy in China," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    8. Xu, Yuanwei & Wang, Feicheng, 2022. "The health consequence of rising housing prices in China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 200(C), pages 114-137.
    9. Antonia Diaz & Maria Jose Luengo Prado, 2008. "On the User Cost and Homeownership," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 11(3), pages 584-613, July.
    10. Green, Richard K. & Vandell, Kerry D., 1999. "Giving households credit: How changes in the U.S. tax code could promote homeownership," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 419-444, July.
    11. Carlos Garriga & Aaron Hedlund & Yang Tang & Ping Wang, 2023. "Rural-Urban Migration, Structural Transformation, and Housing Markets in China," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 413-440, April.
    12. Chang Liu & Wei Xiong, 2018. "China's Real Estate Market," NBER Working Papers 25297, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Tan, Jing & Xu, Hao & Yu, Jingwen, 2022. "The effect of homeownership on migrant household savings: Evidence from the removal of home purchase restrictions in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    14. Serena Fatica & Doris Prammer, 2018. "Housing and the Tax System: How Large Are the Distortions in the Euro Area?," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(2), pages 299-342, June.
    15. Zhimin Li & Leslie Sheng Shen & Calvin Zhang, 2020. "Capital Flows, Asset Prices, and the Real Economy: A "China Shock" in the U.S. Real Estate Market," International Finance Discussion Papers 1286, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    16. Charles Ka Yui LEUNG, 2022. "Housing and Macroeconomics," ISER Discussion Paper 1197, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    17. Hill, Robert J. & Syed, Iqbal A., 2016. "Hedonic price–rent ratios, user cost, and departures from equilibrium in the housing market," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 60-72.
    18. Fan, Gang-Zhi & Li, Han & Li, Jiangyi & Zhang, Jian, 2022. "Housing property rights, collateral, and entrepreneurship: Evidence from China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    19. Mao, Guangyu & Shen, Yan, 2019. "Bubbles or fundamentals? Modeling provincial house prices in China allowing for cross-sectional dependence," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 53-64.
    20. Song, Zheng (Michael) & Xiong, Wei, 2018. "Risks in China’s financial system," BOFIT Discussion Papers 1/2018, Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:chinae:v:30:y:2022:i:1:p:106-135. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwepacn.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.