Ageing, Divorce and Housing Demands—An Empirical Study from China

Abstract

This paper examines the role of divorce in the nexus between aging and housing demands. Based on China’s provincial panel data from 2005 to 2017, we construct a dynamic panel model from the perspective of family to investigate the impact of aging population on housing demands, and the moderating effect of divorce. The study shows that in the sample period, when the moderating effect of divorce is not taken into account, the aging population has a significant inhibitory effect on housing demands, and divorce rates do not increase housing demands in general, but there are instead, differences in the significance levels of the impact of the number of residential transactions and the area in which they occur. After considering the moderating effect, an aging population has an obvious promoting effect on housing demand, but since the divorce rate has a weakening role, the promoting effect will gradually decline. Based on the data from this research, this paper puts forward some suggestions to housing market.