Residential mobility in China: home ownership among rural–urban migrants after reform of the hukou registration system

Abstract

This paper analyzes the housing tenure of China’s rural–urban migrants in eight destination municipalities in Jiangsu province after the reform of the urban registration system (called hukou in Chinese). The objective is to distill links between home ownership and formal residency status. Using binary logistic models, the paper explores the effects of demographics and institutional factors on home ownership. The analysis is based on the data from a survey conducted in 2009 in eight municipalities, representing the responses to the institutional reforms carried out from the 2000s on. The prevalence of home ownership proves to be affected by age, gender, educational level, household size, personal income, participation in an urban insurance scheme, and a Jiangsu hukou status. However, an inter-municipality comparison reveals divergent effects of a Jiangsu hukou. Registration plays a significant role in relatively more-developed municipalities, where the entitlements are higher but so is the threshold to obtain them. In contrast, its role is not significant in less-developed municipalities, where access to civil amenities is more readily granted.