Fertility and housing

Creina Day*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Young households in Hong Kong face particularly steep increases in house prices and low fertility despite low gender wage gaps. The model of fertility and housing in this paper explains why fertility decline need not reverse as female wages rise relative to male wages where housing land is scarce. For given house prices, demand for children may rise with female relative wages if housing comprises a sufficiently large share of childrearing. If the user cost of housing falls with rising house prices then fertility also rises. For endogenous house prices, however, growth in wages and a burgeoning working age population raises the market price of housing. In turn, fertility no longer rises with female relative wages. The analysis provides a novel mechanism whereby high population support ratios depress fertility and the results fit recent evidence that house prices affect fertility.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)172-190
Number of pages19
JournalChina Economic Journal
Volume8
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 4 May 2015

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Fertility and housing'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this