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Housing prices and the subjective well-being of migrant workers: evidence from China

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Abstract

Owning a house is important for most young people in urban China, especially for migrants. For migrants who want to settle in their working city, high housing prices may have a negative effect on their subjective well-being. Using nationally representative migrant survey data, this study examines the relationship between housing prices and migrants’ subjective well-being in China. The results indicate that housing prices play a significantly negative role in migrants’ subjective well-being, especially for low-educated, female, and rural-to-urban migrants. These results are robust to instrumental variable analysis. In addition to the direct mental effect, there is evidence of two possible ways in which housing prices may affect migrants’ subjective well-being. First, high housing prices increase the possibility of migrants living alone in the city, and a geographical family split decreases their subjective well-being. Second, to earn more to purchase a house in the working city in the future, they are more likely to work longer hours and decrease their leisure time, which may cause a decrease in their happiness.

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Notes

  1. Data source: National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China.

  2. Data source: National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China.

  3. The data was obtained from the 2012 China Migrants Dynamic Survey.

  4. Démurger et al., (2009) show that the rural migrants in China work on average 69 h per week, while urban residents only work approximately 44 h per week.

  5. Residential housing sales amount is the total value of all residential houses of the city sold in that year, and residential housing sales area is the total square meters of all residential houses sold of the same city in that year.

  6. The first-stage F-statistic of the instrumental equation in Column (4) of Table 7 is 2340.463, which is above the rule-of-thumb criterion of 10, and it satisfies the standard criteria of instrumental variable (Stock & Yogo, 2005). The p value of overidentifying restrictions Hansen’s J test is 0.162, so the null hypothesis that the overidentifying exclusion restrictions are valid cannot be rejected.

  7. The marginal effect of city housing price in Column (3) of Table 2 is 0.0088, and we calculate the ratio of mediation effect according to this marginal effect coefficient.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Natural Science Fund of China [Grant No. 72103048, 71903037, 41971194]; National Statistical Science Research Program [2020LY039]; the National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences [20ZDA037]; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [21621105]; Innovation Program in Universities of Guangdong Province [2017GXJK052].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Finance & Taxation, Guangdong University of Finance & Economics, 510320, Guangzhou, China

    Li** Liao

  2. Center for the People’s Fiscal Development, Guangdong University of Finance & Economics, 510320, Guangzhou, China

    Li** Liao

  3. School of Economics, **an University, 510632, Guangzhou, China

    Wenjie Wu

  4. School of Economics & Trade, Guangdong University of Finance, 527 Yingfu Road, Tianhe District, 510521, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China

    Chenglei Zhang

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  1. Li** Liao
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Liao, L., Wu, W. & Zhang, C. Housing prices and the subjective well-being of migrant workers: evidence from China. J Happiness Stud 23, 3363–3388 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-022-00549-8

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