A room of one's own: housing consumption and residential crowding in transitional urban China

The goal of this paper is to evaluate the level and examine the dynamics of housing consumption and residential crowding in urban China almost a decade after the housing reform was launched. I argue that housing consumption and residential crowding are affected not only by demographic and socioeconomic factors, as they are in market economies, but also by institutional factors that are unique to China because of the dualism in housing reform. Using a 1996 national survey, I find that the level of housing consumption is still low and residential crowding is common. A room of one's own continues to be a dream for most Chinese. However, Chinese households now have more control over their housing, and their housing behaviors are beginning to share similarities with the West. For example, life cycle, household income, housing tenure, and city size have similar effects on housing consumption and residential crowding as they do in Western housing markets. It is still clear, however, that the socialist institutionöthe hukou systemöcontinues to influence housing consumption, although to a lesser extent than in the prereform period. Households with rural or temporary hukou are at a disadvantage in the housing market, in the sense that they occupy less spacious housing and suffer more from residential crowding than do those with urban and permanent hukou. Yet, these last are more constrained by institutional variables such as job and work-unit characteristics, which affect housing consumption differently across cities. DOI:10.1068/a35119 (1) Residential crowding can occur both at household and at neighborhood levels. In this paper, only residential crowding at the household level is considered. by constructing new housing for self-occupancy. However, the reform in urban China is gradual and evolutionary in comparison with the `big bang' reform in Eastern Europe (McMillan and Naughton, 1996). To ensure a smooth transition, a dual system with `̀ new policies for the new housing stock, old methods for the old housing stock'' (xin fang xin zhi du, lao fang lao bai fa) has been promoted (State Council, 1998). Thus, housing consumption in urban China is affected not only by demographic and marketrelated factors, as in market economies, but also by institutional factors that are unique to the Chinese housing system. In particular, households living in public housing are more constrained in terms of the space they can consume. With some important exceptions (Huang, 2003; Huang and Clark, 2002; Li, 2000a; 2000b; Logan et al, 1999), most existing research focuses on macro-aspects of the housing system in China, such as housing provision (see, for example, Tolley, 1991; Wu, 1996), housing problems (for example, Logan and Bian, 1993; Zhang, 1998), and housing policies (for example, Chen and Gao, 1993; Wang and Murie, 1999), and there has been much less research conducted at the microlevel. In this paper I provide an interpretation of individual behavior in the housing market and the way housing consumption and residential crowding are mediated both by socioeconomic and by institutional factors. After a brief literature review on housing consumption and residential crowding, I evaluate the impact of Chinese housing reform on housing consumption. I then present an empirical analysis of the level of housing consumption in urban China and evaluate the role of different factors affecting housing consumption and crowding. Literature review As important indicators of living standards, housing consumption and residential crowding have long been research foci in the social sciences. Urban sociologists and psychologists study housing consumption as an indicator of socioeconomic achievement, and evaluate urban pathologies associated with residential crowding. They argue that crowded housing conditions can lead to poor mental and physical health, poor social relations in the home, and can have detrimental effects on child care (for example, Baldassare, 1988; Gove and Hughes, 1983; Stokols, 1978). Geographers and economists focus more on the determinants of housing consumption, and the way it changes over time, space, and population. The conventional wisdom is that low-income households, immigrants, and others who live in the inner cities have a low level of housing consumption and are more likely to experience crowding (see, for example, Clark and Drever, 2000; Clark et al, 2000). In general, housing consumption has improved and crowding has been alleviated over time because of shrinking household size, overall expansion in the housing stock, and the `trading up' process (Sternlieb and Hughes, 1980). Residential crowding is also considered an important trigger for residential mobility, and research suggests that in general households occupy larger housing units after they have moved (for example, Clark et al, 1984; Davies and Pickles, 1985; Rossi, 1955). Although racial discrimination is often practiced in housing markets (Galster, 1988; Massey and Denton, 1993), households are assumed to have freedom in housing consumption, and the amount of floor space they consume determined mainly by their needs and available income. In socialist China, housing was allocated and the amount of space a household could have was determined by government policies. Political status and professional qualifications, rather than households' needs and resources, were the main criteria determining the allocation of housing space. According to the Regulation of Housing Allocation in a university in Chongqing, which is based on a similar regulation by the State Council in 1983, the amount of living space a household 592 Y Huang