Empirical Study Of The Relationship Between Housing Prices And Stability Of Marriage

Recent 30 years, the marital stability in China gradually kept declining. National bureau of statistics data show that the coarse divorce rate increased from 0.4357 per thousand in 1985 to 2.67 per thousand in 2014, which increased 5.13 times, it reflects the marital stability of Chinese residents in the increasingly volatile situation. At the same time, the average selling price of house in China kept rising, which is up from 310.88 yuan per square meter in 1985 to 6324 yuan per square meter in 2014 and rose 19 times in 30 years and the average annual growth rate is 10.95%. Rising house prices not only affects Chinese economic development, but also other aspects of society. The above figures show that house prices and the divorce rate emerge the common trends.Firstly, this paper compared the statistical data of divorce rates and marital stability changes over time and found that in terms of overall national or sub-provinces of view, the presence of similar trends in house prices and the stability of marriage, it means that the more house prices to higher divorce rate or the number of divorced couples is also growing. As many scholars believe that economic factors will affect the stability of marriage, then this paper from an economic perspective on the impact of marital stability and house prices to analyzed interaction mechanism, obtained the conclusions that under certain assumptions, house prices will affect marital stability, marital stability will also affect the house prices.Second, this paper uses the data of divorce rate and commercial housing sales price data from 1985 to 2014 in our country, and probes into the relationship between them by using the method of time series analysis including co-integration test, error correction model and granger causality test. The conclusion is that during 1985-2014 we do not found statistically the evidence that house prices affect the divorce rate in our country, but we can find the evidence that the divorce rate affect house prices, which are different from related research conclusions. For this, the explanation provided by this paper is that the influencing factors of the divorce rate such as foreign institutional environment, the concept of marriage, the legal system of social culture, are different form our country, and the assumptions in these studies maybe does not meet to our country, which lead to the difference. And for domestic research conclusion, they contrary the Granger causality test requirements in empirical analysis, it may affect the reliability of the conclusion.Based on the research conclusion, this paper argues that our relevant government departments should stick to further perfect the real estate regulation policy to prevent the excessive rapid growth in house prices in China and ensure the efficient operation of the real estate market.