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Given its significant implications for the economy and society, this paper investigates the impact of housing supply regulation on household wealth inequality. Utilizing data from the China Household Finance Survey and land transaction records spanning from 2013 to 2019, we employ recentered influence function regression and two-way fixed effects models to analyze the effect of unexpected housing supply shocks on the wealth gap among households. Our findings reveal that positive unexpected housing supply shocks are crucial in reducing household wealth inequality. This reduction is attributed to the heterogeneous impacts of housing supply regulation on different wealth groups. By deregulating the housing supply, the upward trend in housing prices has slowed, which in turn makes homeownership more accessible and facilitates wealth accumulation for households that fall within the 20 % and 80 % wealth quantiles. Conversely, deregulation has a negative impact on property values for households in the 80–100 % wealth quantile, thus mitigating their overall wealth growth. Overall, this study emphasizes the significant role of housing supply regulation in shaping wealth inequality in China. • This paper examines the housing supply regulation's impact on wealth inequality in China. • Positive housing supply shocks play a vital role in decreasing household wealth inequality. • Deregulation boosts homeownership for 20 %–80 % wealth quantile households. • Wealthiest households face property value drops with deregulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life course researchers have made important advances in understanding the Western transition to adulthood but have paid less attention to global variations and gender differences. This paper draws on Risman's (2004, 2018) theory of gender as a social structure to examine the gendered meanings of establishing an independent household, a relatively new marker of adulthood in China that has evolved to focus on home ownership. Drawing on 100 interviews with men and women in two cities in southwest China, we find that men's ability to buy a house was typically seen as an indicator of competence, potential, and independence. By contrast, for women a house was often described as something men or parents provided to spare them from having to attain this marker of adulthood on their own. This depiction of women as vulnerable and fragile was at odds with interviewees' expectations for women's actual financial contributions toward a house. This rhetoric made home ownership a "male marker" of adulthood that undermined women's relationship to property, a key component of wealth in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Chinese government abolished the employer-based public housing system in 1998, which created an exogenous variation in housing demand among urban households. • This paper makes use of this reform and adopts a difference-in-difference approach to study the effect of this reform on household saving rates. • We find evidence that the reform increased household saving rates during and after the reform period by raising private burden of housing expenditures. China's urban household saving rate has increased markedly since the mid-1990s, accompanied by a dramatic increase in home ownership. Is there a causal link between those two phenomena? This paper takes advantage of a unique natural experiment in China, which reformed the nationwide employer-based public housing system in 1998. This reform created an exogenous variation in housing demand among urban households. Using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, we find evidence that the reform increased household saving rates during the reform period (1998–2001) by shifting the cost of housing services from the state to households. We also provide evidence that suggests that the 1998 housing reform affects household saving behaviors even after the reform period (2002–2009). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is a country of homeowners, where >80% of households own their homes and >20% of urban households own multiple homes. China achieved this unprecedented high rate home ownership in a short period of three decades. While we have a growing understanding of homeownership in general we are less clear about the process and outcomes of multiple home ownership in China. This paper examines the patterns of and driving forces for multiple home ownership, and explores the implications for housing inequality in Chinese cities. While socio-economic factors appear critical in China as is the case in the West, we argue for an institutional and cultural perspective to better understand multiple home ownership in China. The empirical analyses using 2015 China Household Finance Survey show that households who received housing subsidies, have urban registration, experienced demolition and resettlement, have school age children attending key schools, and have sons are more likely to own multiple homes. By focusing on the institutional and cultural forces, this paper better explains the unprecedented high rate of multiple homeownership in Chinese cities, and demonstrates how various housing policies in China have unintentionally contributed to multiple homeownership and thus housing and wealth inequality. • Multiple home ownership rate is unprecedented high in Chinese cities • Institutional and cultural factors together with sociodemographic forces drive multiple home ownership in China • Housing subsidies and resettlement promote multiple home ownership • Rural migrant are less while urban migrant are more likely to own multiple homes than local urban homeowners • Having children attending key schools and having sons encourage multiple homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]