Household Wealth in China

Abstract

With new nationwide longitudinal survey data now available from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we study the level, distribution, and composition of household wealth in contemporary China. We find that the wealth Gini coefficient of China was 0.73 in 2012. The richest 1 percent owned more than one-third of the total national household wealth, while the poorest 25 percent owned less than 2 percent. Housing assets, which accounted for over 70 percent, were the largest component of household wealth. Finally, the urban-rural divide and regional disparities played important roles in household wealth distribution, and institutional factors significantly affected household wealth holdings, wealth growth rate, and wealth mobility.

Military Service and Life Chances in Contemporary China

“…This is an area examined by few studies, although asset/wealth disparity has become a new dimension to explain the persistence and enlargement of social inequality (Oliver and Shapiro 1997), and housing is a wealth pillar for economic security and stability. Accounting for 74.7 percent of household wealth in China (Xie and Jin 2015), housing has become increasingly unequal since the onset of housing commercialization. Privatization of work unit housing allows individuals to buy at the low state price and sell at a higher commercial price, or to simply own a home worth more than they paid for it.…”

Living space and psychological well-being in urban China: Differentiated relationships across socio-economic gradients

“…We calculated total family wealth as the sum of a comprehensive set of assets, which is detailed by Xie and Jin (2015, 205) to include "housing assets, financial assets (e.g., savings, stock, funds, bonds, financial derivatives, and other financial assets), agricultural machinery, business assets, detailed items of durable goods (valuables included), and liabilities from housing and other sources". Although Western research shows that estimates of wealth holdings can be imprecise, Xie and Jin (2015) report that this family wealth measure performs well as an indicator of relative affluence in China.…”

“…The reforms also mean that both expectations of and access to living space are increasingly tied to command of socio-economic resources (Li, 2000;Huang and Li, 2014). Meanwhile, China's economic reform also entailed accruing socio-economic disparities as well as divergent cultural preferences between the affluent and the impoverished (Hu, 2016;Xie and Hu, 2014;Xie and Jin, 2015). This means that relative socio-economic position could play an increasingly crucial role in the construction of space expectations, thereby generating differences in how people from across the socio-economic spectrum respond psychologically to given quantities of dwelling space (Chen and Gao, 1993;Li, 2000;Wu et al, 2012).…”

“…This variation is important because China now has one of the highest levels of family wealth disparity in the world (Xie and Jin, 2015). The country's rapid yet uneven economic growth and urbanization has also led to an uneven spread of poverty across neighborhood communities and the emergence of urban "ghettoes" (Wang, 2004).…”

Socioeconomic Inequalities in Health in China: A Reassessment with Data from the 2010–2012 China Family Panel Studies

“…Total family wealth is measured in terms of net worth, which is the sum of land, housing, financial assets (including savings, stock, funds, bonds, financial derivatives, etc. ), fixed assets for production (including agricultural machinery and business assets), and durable goods (valuables included), minus housing and non-housing liabilities (Xie and Jin 2015). Political capital is also measured at the family level by a dichotomous variable indicating whether any family member is a cadre, CPC member, or United Front Democratic Party member.…”