Home or Away: Exploring the Influence of Housing Challenges on Migrants' Return Intention

The discussion on the return intentions of migrants and its influencing factors has been widely discussed. Existing research indicates that factors such as economic status, household registration status, identity recognition, and urban integration can largely influence the willingness of rural migrants to return home. Additionally, with the development of the digital economy, engaging in entrepreneurship has also to some extent encouraged rural migrants to go back home. Considering the rapid increase in housing prices in China over the past decade, issues related to housing affordability have undoubtedly become factors prompting rural migrants’ return intention. Considering rural migrants are more disadvantaged in receiving housing assistance in residing cities, housing difficulties, especially housing affordability issues are therefore further accelerating their willingness to return home. However, many existing studies on housing affordability focus on the nation as a whole, with little attention on disadvantaged groups such as rural migrants. Therefore, this paper integrates the issues of housing difficulties with the return intentions of rural migrants, exploring how housing difficulties have impacted their willingness to return home using China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) 2017 data. Two variables were constructed to measure housing difficulties: subjective and objective housing difficulties. Subjective housing difficulties were determined through survey questions asking whether migrants experience housing difficulties. Housing affordability ratio is adopted to evaluate the subjective housing difficulties encountered by migrants. We used the macro house prices data on the residing cities and the micro household income included in the survey to calculate the house price to income ratio. Based on the international threshold, the housing price-to-income ratio higher than 3 is considered to have objective housing difficulties. We investigated the impact of subjective and objective housing difficulties on rural migrants’ return intention. Using a probit and IV Probit model, our research evidenced a negative relationship between subjective housing difficulties and return intention. Self-reporting housing difficulties didn’t really increase the likelihood of returning home, because this variable was often influenced by individual risk preferences. While it is evidenced that objective housing difficulties have positive impact on return intention. Specifically, the higher the house price to income ratio, the higher likelihood of returning home. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the relationship between objective and subjective housing difficulties and the return intention of migrants varies across different levels of economic development in residing cities, educational achievement, and age group.