Since housing assets have become an important component of household wealth, social inequality aroused by homeownership is increasingly prominent. Housing might be often viewed as an important indicator reflecting social status of individuals or famil...
Since housing assets have become an important component of household wealth, social inequality aroused by homeownership is increasingly prominent. Housing might be often viewed as an important indicator reflecting social status of individuals or families in some countries, but little research has investigated this issue. This paper aims to find out the effects of homeownership on social inequality through empirical analysis, and put forward some policy suggestions on housing market. I employ the 2012 follow-up database of CFPS (China Family Panel Studies) to explore the relationship between household homeownership and social inequality in China. The estimation results show that subjective social status of urban residents is lower than those of people who live in rural area by using ordered logit model. Multiple-home ownership is also found to have significant and positive influence on people’s subjective social status other than the group of low income. Housing area is robustly and positively linked to the subjective social status, while there is no evidence that housing price can impact Chinese subjective social status significantly.