Unequal treatment in the rental housing markets of four Chinese megacities

Abstract

Unequal treatment of tenants in housing markets can create significant economic and social costs. Yet, it has attracted limited attention outside the Western world. In an online correspondence study based on 1,167 email applications to landlords at a major Chinese real estate website, we investigate whether there is unequal treatment in rental housing markets in the four megacities Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. We find that applications with Uighur-sounding names are approximately seven percentage points less likely to receive response from landlords and 9.6 percentage points less likely to be offered a showing compared to applications with Han Chinese names. Additional information on white-collar work or a long-term residence perspective in the city does not eliminate differences in landlords' responses to names, therewith rejecting the idea of statistical discrimination on income or residence permits. We discuss possible extensions of the experimental design and conclude that the unequal treatment of different ethnic groups may pose an important future challenge to housing market regulation in urban China.

Keywords

Market discrimination; Nepotism; Correspondence study; Housing markets; Taste-based discrimination; Statistical discrimination

Published in

Journal of Housing Economics
2023, volume: 61, article number: 101945

SLU Authors

• Rommel, Jens

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Global goals (SDG)

SDG5 Gender equality
SDG10 Reduced inequalities
SDG11 Sustainable cities and communities

UKÄ Subject classification

Economics

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhe.2023.101945

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/122164