Family Housing Property Rights,Marital Relationship And Fetility Decisions

Family is the minimum unit of social and economic functioning,with the foundation of marriage.Fertility decision is one of the foremost decisions in family.Chinese families have shown a trendancy of high divorce rate and low fertility rate,which will cause profound and longlasting effect on population problems and macro economic growth.To maintain stable marriage and promote fertility intention is an important target for the policy-makers.While with the soaring housing price,housing property right has become remarkable factor to impact marriage and fertility decisions.Housing property problems are the hot topics in marriage market.The discussions could be divided into two aspects:Firstly,whether the family own the housing property right or not.Housing prorperty is deemed as status goods in marital market,affecting the results of marital match.But actually the ratio of housing price and income is ranked highly in top of the world,making it difficult to afford a house and get property rights."Is it necessary to buy a house for marriage,why it is important" making young people feel puzzled.Secondly,the "property certificate distribution problem".It means how the property rights of housing assets are divided between the husband and wife.The distribution of property rights of housing assets determines the method of property division when a couple get divorced,and also affects various decisions of both spouses during the marriage.In recent years,the phenomenon of "no marriage without a real estate certificate" has become commonplace,which makes people wonder to knowwhy the signature of the real estate certificate is so important and what the impact is?Though the problem of "Is it necessary to buy a house for marriage"?the "property certificate distribution" is vastly discussed in media,the empiricial researches based on survey data are not sufficient.Therefore,this paper combines the above hot topics in housing property right and the researches in family,put forword the topic of this paper——the impact of housing property right on marital relationship and fertility decision.Without concentrating in pre-marital decisions,this paper put high value on marital relationship,including emotional relationship and division of labor relationship.The researches on fertility decisions are mainly concentrated on fertility intention,the input of children are considered as well.Specially,the topic of this article can be divided into four questions:(1)Whether the family owns housing property rights and the impact on marital relationships,using marital satisfaction as the proxy to measure the impact of housing property rights on emotional relationships;(2)Whether the family owns housing property rights or not and its impact on fertility intention,based on the'preference for the number of offspring and the gender preference for offspring;(3)The distribution of housing property rights between husband and wife and its effect on marital relations between couples,specicially the intra-household bargaining power in family;(4)The impact of the distribution of housing property rights between husband and wife on family fertility decision-making,specifically including the ideal children number and the input to the offsprings.The research combines theoritcal analysis and empicirial analysis together,using innovative instrumental variables such as "whether the place of household registration is the same as the place of birth","whether the migration of household registration to the local time is later than the time of marriage" to solve endogeneity problems.The main research conclusions of this article are as follows:Firstly,the housing property rights of the family can affect maritalsatisfaction.Results shows that when family owns the housing property right,marital satisfaction is improved,and the effect is more obvious between women.After using the instrumental variable to overcome endogeneity,the conclusion still holds.Further research shows that the positive impact of household ownership of housing property rights on marital satisfaction does not increase with the higher housing prices,bigger living area and better living conditions,but get more significant in groups with medium housing prices,medium living areas and medium living conditions.Mechanism analysis shows that effect is not produced by influencing the family's credit constraints,but by improving psychological state of couples.When a family owns the housing property right,the frequency of residents' mental stress decreases,and their confidence in the future increases,thus residents' satisfaction with marriage increases.Secondly,when family owns the housing property right,the fertility intentions get changed.Specificially,family owning housing property right has a significant positive impact on the number of ideal children,and the preference of son increases.After using instrumental variables to overcome endogeneity,the conclusion still holds.Further research shows that the above-mentioned impact is more significant in areas with high housing prices.The mechanism researches show that the impact of family housing property rights on fertility intention is caused by releasing family's credit constraints.Thirdly,the distribution of housing property right can affect division of labor in marriage.The housing property owner has more decision power in family affairs and bears low housework burden.The conclusion is still valid after overcoming the endogenous problem by using "whether the time of hukou immigration is later than marriage time" as an instrumental variable.In areas with high divorce rates and high housing prices,the effect become more obivious.Research on the impact mechanism shows housing property rights defines division of property faced with divorce threats.According to the current marriage law,non-proprietors are less likely to own house at the time of divorce and face greater utility losses,so they are more likely to make compromises in marriage and have more housework burden.Fourthly,though female ownership of housing property rights has no significant impact on male fertility intention,it has significantly increased the female fertility intention——the ideal number of offsprings has increased.Research on the mechanism shows that the positive impact is related to women's housework burden.When the wife having the housing property rights,her burden of housework become less,and she would like to bear more children.In areas with high housing prices,the positive impact of women's housing property ownership on fertility intention is more significant.Further research has shown that when women own housing property rights,their ability of family resources allocation increases,their offspring get more nutrition input.The family spends more on food,and the offspring's nutritional status is better.The novelty and innovations of this paper are illustrated as follows:Firstly,in practical aspect,"why we should buy houses in marriage"?"how to sign the certificate of housing property right" is hot topic in marriage market,while essentially this problems are concerned with housing property right.The former one shows whether the family should own the housing property right,while the latter one refers to how the housing property right is distributed between couples.Though the topics are discussed vastly in media,the quantitative analyses are not adequate.Secondly,in research content,past literaturs of marital relationship and fertility decisions are concentrated on family wealth,culture,relative income of family members and female conflict of "work—family".Though some literatures show that house could affect family decisions,the topic is about housing price and the house value.Housing property right is a neglected topic,and our paper make some explanations about that.Thirdly,in reseach method,this paper combines theoretical models and empirical analysis together,using innovative instrumental variables such as "whether the place of household registration is the same as the place of birth","whether the migration of household registration to the local time is later than the time of marriage" to solve endogeneity problems.According to the research contents,the data need to contain all kinds of information of housing property rights,marital satisfaction,division of labor,and fertility decisions.Thus the choices are quite limited.The data of this paper is not varied enough and the empirical method is not suitable for DID and RD.This is our limitation and future research direction.