The Impact Of Age Structure Of Population On Housing Demand

Since1998, when China abolished the welfare housing distribution system, China’s housing market has started to stride forward in the direction of marketization.Through the ten years’ development, the real estate industry has become the pillar industry, supporting the national economic development, plays an important role in the economy. Housing demand is the basic requirement which determines that China’s housing market must be affected by demographic factors. If the system of tax distribution of China won’t change in the future, the development of population of age structure is definitely the critical factors influencing the housing market. Therefore, this article studies how does the changing population age structure affect the housing market through the empirical research, and predict the trends of the housing market based on the prediction of the future population age structure.This article first elaborates the theory of supply and demand in real estate market, the demographic transition theory, and the life cycle theory, summarizes the existing related literature, on the basis of qualitative analysis, analyses how the population age structure changes directly affects the residential market demand and how the economic effect brought by the change of population age structure indirectly affects the housing market. And then, according to the national age groups and housing market data from1998to2011, through the empirical analysis to find out the age groups that have the significant impact on the residential demand and prices, population aged from20to34are the main body of rigid requirements, population aged from35to54represents the improved demand for housing, population aged from55to64are the main body of the speculative demand. According to the sixth census data in2010, the paper predicts the future development trend of the population in our country. Combined the prediction results with the empirical results, the paper then predicts the future changes in the housing market of China through the future changes in population age structure trends. Predicted results show that in the next15years aging will be severe in our country, the old-age dependency ratio will be more than the children dependency ratio. With the declining proportion of working age population, the social lotal dependency ratio will continue to rise which drives the demographic dividend gradually disappear. At the same time, the development trends of the three age groups that have the significant impact on the demand for housing are that the proportion of population aged from20to34will decline, the proportion of population aged35to54will fall after reaching the peak, proportion of population aged from55to64will experience a slightly growth. According to the population prediction, we can get that the rigid demand of housing will decline in15years, while the speculative demand will increase in the short run but start to decrease in the long run. Thus in the long run, the demand for housing market will fall.Finally, based on the qualitative analysis and quantitative forecast results, combined with the national conditions, the paper proposed the relevant policy recommendations, in order to promote the housing market to achieve sustainable development in the future.