Housing Reform, Life Course and Urban Housing Acquisition (1980-2010)

Based on data from the Guangzhou Household Survey in 2010 and event history model, this paper analyzes how the interactions between the housing marketization reform and individual life course affect Chinese citizens’ acquisition of property rights of their first house. Research shows that the differential mode of association in housing marketization reform and diverse reform strategies have created clear period effect and cohort effect on housing acquisition. The dual housing market system, consisted of welfare housing propertization and housing commercialization, has reduced housing inequality between people within and out of the establishment, but aggravated housing inequality between the elite and non-elite, and extended the administrative elites’ advantage in acquiring welfare housing. During the course of the housing reform, institutional segmentation and market differentiation have led to overlapping and mutually reinforcing types of housing inequality, exacerbating housing differentiation for the younger cohort through the intergenerational transmission.