PhD Seminar (Economics): Housing prices and marriage delay in China

Tunye Qiu, the Crawford School PhD candidate, presents his research on the impacts of housing prices on marriage delay in China.

This paper examines the impact of increasing housing prices on the delay of marriage in China where people normally expect to own a home before marriage. This study provides a theoretical model to illustrate that in response to housing price increases, people would delay marriage partly involuntarily because they must accumulate more saving due to increasing downpayments of buying a home, and partly voluntarily because they would mitigate the crowding out effect on non-housing consumption. The study further provides an empirical analysis of the impacts of rising housing prices on the age of the first-time marriage based on China’s 2010 National Population Census data from 2006 to 2010. Using instrumental variables from the supply side of housing markets, our estimation shows that a 10 percent increase in housing prices delays the age at the first marriage by 0.73 months for urban hukou holders. Furthermore, women experience a more pronounced delay in marriage than men. Additionally, rising housing prices also delay the age at the first childbirth for urban females, which is a direct consequence of the delay in marriage.