Housing Boom and Household Migration Decision: New Evidence from China

With novel microdata from a household survey of China, we find that migrants decide to move out of destination cities experiencing housing booms, even after controlling for various factors and address potential endogeneity issues that may affect households’ migration decisions. Moreover, we present new evidence that housing booms have no effect on the decisions of homeowners but affect renters through a negative income effect. Next, we use big data on population flows from Tencent to confirm the effects of housing booms on households’ actual out-migration. The results suggest that an affordable home is a primary factor in attracting migrant households and maintaining a healthy economy.