Research On The Influence Of House Prices On The Chinese Family Size

Since the implementation of China's housing system reform in 1998,housing prices began to rise rapidly.As housing prices grow too fast,the difficulty of purchasing house have become a hot topic of public concern.The purchase of new homes and the cultivation of the next generation are two major expenditures of the family.Affected by budget constraints,the increase in housing expenditure inevitably affects the decision-making of family's fertility,leading some families don't dare to give birth,reduce the number of children and late childbearing,this lead to a reduce in the fertility rate.The number of direct impact on the size of the size of the family.Based on this,this paper presents a reasonable guess: high prices lead to miniaturization of family size.Is this guess reasonable? This is what this article discusses.Based on the theoretical analysis,this paper uses the provincial panel data from1999 to 2014 to study the effect of house price on family size.In the empirical analysis,this paper uses static panel model(fixed effect model,random effect model),dynamic panel model(system GMM model)and OLS model to examine the impact of house prices on the size of the family.In order to make the regression results more convincing,this paper has carried on the following robustness test on the basis of the above empirical analysis: First,in order to solve the problem of endogenous causality such as reverse causality and sample selectivity bias between house price and family size,Per capital land transfer area and per capital land transfer are used as a tool variable for house prices;Second,because this article speculates that house prices may affect the size of the family by influencing the birth rate,and how the impact of house prices on the birth rate is analyzed;Thirdly,on the basis of the above empirical analysis of macroeconomic data,this paper also discusses the impact of house price on family size from microcosmic individual level by using China Comprehensive Social Survey(CGSS)data in 2012 and 2013.This paper draws the following conclusions:(1)Rising housing prices is an important factor in the miniaturization of family size;(2)The impact of house prices on the size of the family in different regions is heterogeneous: the size of the family in the eastern region is more easily affected by house prices than in the central and western regions,compared to the central and western regions,which may be due to the fact that the eastern region of the economy is more developed,housing prices arerelatively high,so the burden of housing is more heavy;(3)There is a negative correlation between house price and birth rate,and the birth rate is positively correlated with the size of the family.These are in line with our conjecture;(4)The improvement of family economic conditions can weaken the impact of house prices on family size.