Economic Potential Gain, Income Uncertainty, and Rural Migrants’ Urban Homeownership: Evidence from China

Jie Chen, Wei Wang () and Yan Song
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Jie Chen: School of International and Public Affairs, China Institute for Urban Governance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Wei Wang: School of Energy and Building Environment, Guilin University of Aerospace Technology, Guilin 541004, China
Yan Song: Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 9, 1-22

Abstract: Citizenization of rural migrants is considered as a labeling urbanization goal in developing countries. Homeownership has always been regarded as the most important cornerstone of citizenization for individuals and families in China. Despite the existence of plenty of literature on migrants’ homeownership, some critical influencing factors are still under-investigated. On the basis of the large nation-wide micro data of the China Migrant Dynamic Survey (CMDS), this study investigates the correlations among economic potential gain, income uncertainty, and rural migrants’ homeownership propensity in their host cities. The empirical results suggest that economic potential gain is positively correlated with the likelihood of rural migrants’ homeownership in their host cities, whereas there is negative association between income uncertainty and urban homeownership propensity among rural migrant households. In addition, we found that larger income uncertainty lowers the positive association between economic potential gain and rural migrants’ homeownership propensity in their host cities. Furthermore, the heterogeneity of these correlations across demographic characteristics and regions were investigated. We conclude this paper by making several suggestions, including offering a level playing field for rewarding migrants’ human capital endowment reasonably in terms of income, accelerating the hukou system reform, and eliminating institutional discrimination imposed on rural migrants to increase income stability.

Keywords: homeownership; economic potential gain; income uncertainty; rural migrant (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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