Study On The Moderate Level Of Urban Housing Security In China

Housing policy is an important policy concerning the sustainable development of nationaleconomy and the stability of the society. The housing security policy is not only the corecontent of housing policy, but also a critical component of urban social security policy.China is now in the key stage of social economic development. If the housing securitylevel is too low, the basic living condition for most of the low and lowest income familieswould not be assured and may result in social instability. On the other side, if the housingsecurity level is too high, the overmuch financial burden for the Chinese government maydecelerate the national economic development. Therefore, the backgrounds of Chinesesocial economy and housing market situation have to be fully analyzed before thedecision of housing security level.In this paper, housing security level is represented by the ratio between housingsecurity expense and GDP. No matter where and how the fund comes, all of the expenses,which are paid to the low and lowest income families by the government, are regarded ashousing security expenses.Among the many influential factors to the decision of moderate housing security level,the ability of government supply, the demand of the resident and the housing marketsituation are mainly considered in this paper. And twelve indicators are used to evaluatethese factors. Base on the historical data from 1998 to 2004, the Principal ComponentsAnalysis Method is adopted to calculate the factor index above and the theoreticalhousing security level. The Sensitivity Analysis Method is also used to evaluate theinfluence to housing security level by each factor. Finally the factor of national economicdevelopment level is found to be the one with greatest influence to housing security level.Due to its close relation with the housing security level, the national economicdevelopment level is mainly considered in this paper. And by the help of the existingmodels in social security studies, the housing security level in China is also quantitativelymodeled. The calculation shows that the ratio between housing security expense and theGDP should be from 1.71% to 4.59%, which could be regarded as the moderate level ofhousing security. In parallel comparison with other countries, the theoretical result isproved to be adaptable to the current situation of Chinese economy. Furthermore, thestandard and significance of moderate level of housing security is analyzed anddiscussed.In order to demonstrate the practical role the moderate housing security level plays,case study is implemented to analyze the situation in Beijing City. Firstly, the situation ofcurrent housing security in Beijing was thoroughly surveyed, the security expense wascalculated as 2.21 billion Yuan per year and the ratio between the housing securityexpense and local GDP, which indicates the housing security level, is around 0.64%,which is lower than the moderate housing security level calculated above. Accordingly, thehousing security expense has to be raised between 5.9 and 15.9 billion Yuan in order toreach the moderate level. Therefore, with the background of steady increase of housingsecurity expense nationwide, the government of Beijing should pay more attention to theissues of housing problems of low and lowest income people, by further enhancing thehousing security level.