Chinese Journal of Sociology

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Housing Inequality during the Market Transition: Evidence from the Data of CGSS2006

Author:Hu Rong,The Department of Sociology,School of Public Adminstration,Guangzhou University.   

  1. Author:Hu Rong,The Department of Sociology,School of Public Adminstration,Guangzhou University.
  • Online:2012-01-20 Published:2012-01-20
  • Contact: Hu Rong,The Department of Sociology,School of Public Adminstration,Guangzhou University. E-mail:echo19802002@yahoo.com.cn
  • About author:Hu Rong,The Department of Sociology,School of Public Adminstration,Guangzhou University.
  • Supported by:

    The research was supported by the National Social Science Fund “Social Stratification and Social Harmony: The Perspective of Urban Housing”(09ASH001) and project of Humanities and Social Sciences of Ministry of Education: “The Research on Sustainable Development of Lowrent Housing”(10YJC840079).

Abstract:

As an important part of the economic system reform, the housing reform in China has been going on for more than 30 years, which has led to gradual commercialization and marketization of housing distribution. The analysis using Hierarchical Linear Modeling on the data of CGSS2006 has revealed the degrees of housing inequality and the impact of the housing distribution mechanism with the background of regional disparity. Firstly, at the regional level, market transformation improved the overall housing conditions for the urban residents. The higher the regional market level, the more housing resources the urban/town residents possessed. Despite of that, there was a clear differentiation between house owners and renters concerning the positive effect of the market transition, that is, renters did not significantly benefit from the process of market transition. Meanwhile, market transition enhanced the regional housing inequality in a given period of time. An inverted Ushaped relationship between regional market level and the regional housing inequality indicated that the gap in the ownership of housing resources first expanded with the progress of the regional marketization, and shrank only at a later time. Secondly, some danwei(work unit) related factors such as its features, rank, or size no longer affected the distribution of housing resources; the housing differences between the workers who were within and those who were outside the stateowned working system no longer reached the statistical significance level. However, at the individual level, the cadre identity sustained its persistent impact on housing distribution; the political elite with the redistribution power still enjoyed an obvious advantage in obtaining houses. The findings revealed a dual stratification system in housing distribution during the current market transition and this system played a role in doubling the size of the housing inequality.

Key words: housing, ,   inequality,  , market transition