IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/apacel/v40y2026i1p3-15.html

Housing Debt and Home‐Work Separation: Evidence From China

Author

Listed:
  • Xiaofen Yu
  • Dingpei Hu
  • Chengfu Zhao
  • Mingzhi Hu

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of housing debt, measured by loan‐to‐value (LTV) ratios, on the separation between homeowners' residences and workplaces. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we find that housing debt significantly increases home‐work separation, after controlling for various demographic characteristics, socioeconomic factors, and individual‐ and year‐specific effects. These results are robust to the endogeneity issue, the inclusion of unobservable time‐varying provincial‐specific factors, sample selection bias, and the exclusion of irrational homeowners. Furthermore, we find that the positive effect of housing debt on home‐work separation is particularly pronounced among low‐ and medium‐skilled homeowners. We also observe a significant positive relationship between home‐work separation and homeowners' job income. Overall, our findings highlight that homeowners with higher leverage are more likely to experience home‐work separation due to the burden of mortgage repayments, which may lead them to seek high‐paying jobs that involve longer commuting distances.

Suggested Citation

  • Xiaofen Yu & Dingpei Hu & Chengfu Zhao & Mingzhi Hu, 2026. "Housing Debt and Home‐Work Separation: Evidence From China," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 40(1), pages 3-15, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:apacel:v:40:y:2026:i:1:p:3-15
    DOI: 10.1111/apel.12457
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/apel.12457
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/apel.12457?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Songtao Wang & Su Han Chan & Bohua Xu, 2012. "The Estimation and Determinants of the Price Elasticity of Housing Supply: Evidence from China," Journal of Real Estate Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(3), pages 311-344, January.
    2. Li, Chunjiang & Zhang, Yan & Chai, Yanwei, 2021. "Do spatial factors outweigh institutional factors? Changes in influencing factors of home-work separation from 2007 to 2017 in Beijing," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    3. Xin Li & Reinout Kleinhans & Maarten van Ham, 2019. "Ambivalence in place attachment: the lived experiences of residents in danwei communities facing demolition in Shenyang, China," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(6), pages 997-1020, July.
    4. Albert Saiz, 2010. "The Geographic Determinants of Housing Supply," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(3), pages 1253-1296.
    5. Lina Meng & Xiao Xiao & Yinggang Zhou, 2023. "Housing Boom and Household Migration Decision: New Evidence from China," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 67(3), pages 453-479, October.
    6. Songtao Wang & Su Han Chan & Bohua Xu, 2012. "The Estimation and Determinants of the Price Elasticity of Housing Supply: Evidence from China," Journal of Real Estate Research, American Real Estate Society, vol. 34(3), pages 311-344.
    7. Pengpeng Yue & Aslihan Gizem Korkmaz & Zhichao Yin & Haigang Zhou, 2021. "Household-owned Businesses’ Vulnerability to the COVID-19 Pandemic," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(6), pages 1662-1674, May.
    8. Fernández-Val, Iván & Weidner, Martin, 2016. "Individual and time effects in nonlinear panel models with large N, T," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 192(1), pages 291-312.
    9. Song, Yang, 2014. "What should economists know about the current Chinese hukou system?," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 200-212.
    10. Yue Wang & Zidan Mao & Donggen Wang, 2023. "Housing affordability and mental health in urban China: a cross-sectional study," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(3), pages 484-504, March.
    11. Zhenguo Lin & Yingchun Liu & Jia Xie, 2016. "Immigrants and Mortgage Delinquency," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 44(1), pages 198-235, February.
    12. William G. Hardin & Mingzhi Hu & Zhenguo Lin, 2023. "Culture, Wealth, Gender, Real Estate, and Consumption in China: It’s a Boy," Journal of Real Estate Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(1), pages 55-82, January.
    13. Ying Fan & Abdullah Yavas, 2020. "How Does Mortgage Debt Affect Household Consumption? Micro Evidence from China," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 48(1), pages 43-88, March.
    14. Xu, Dandan & Guo, Dongli & Yue, Pengpeng & Li, Mengshi, 2024. "Household green consumption: Does digital inclusion matter?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    15. Zhang, Mengzhu & He, Shenjing & Zhao, Pengjun, 2018. "Revisiting inequalities in the commuting burden: Institutional constraints and job-housing relationships in Beijing," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 58-71.
    16. James H. Stock & Motohiro Yogo, 2002. "Testing for Weak Instruments in Linear IV Regression," NBER Technical Working Papers 0284, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Lara Engelfriet & Eric Koomen, 2018. "The impact of urban form on commuting in large Chinese cities," Transportation, Springer, vol. 45(5), pages 1269-1295, September.
    18. Yu Song & Guofan Shao & Xiaodong Song & Yong Liu & Lei Pan & Hong Ye, 2017. "The Relationships between Urban Form and Urban Commuting: An Empirical Study in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(7), pages 1-17, July.
    19. Zhifang Su & Jr‐Tsung Huang & Arthur Jin Lin, 2021. "House price expectations, mortgages, and subjective well‐being in urban China," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(4), pages 1540-1562, December.
    20. Xun Bian, 2016. "Leverage and Elderly Homeowners’ Decisions to Downsize," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 20-41, January.
    21. Mario Cruz-Gonzalez & Iván Fernández-Val & Martin Weidner, 2017. "Bias corrections for probit and logit models with two-way fixed effects," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 17(3), pages 517-545, September.
    22. Chen, Jie & Hu, Mingzhi & Lin, Zhenguo, 2019. "Does housing unaffordability crowd out elites in Chinese superstar cities?," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 1-1.
    23. Dong Lin & Andrew Allan & Jianqiang Cui, 2015. "The impacts of urban spatial structure and socio-economic factors on patterns of commuting: a review," International Journal of Urban Sciences, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2), pages 238-255, July.
    24. Deng, Xin & Yu, Mingzhe, 2021. "Does the marginal child increase household debt? – Evidence from the new fertility policy in China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    25. Xun Bian & Zhenguo Lin, 2022. "Housing debt and elderly housing tenure choices," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1360-1397, September.
    26. Edward L. Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko & Raven E. Saks, 2006. "Urban growth and housing supply," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(1), pages 71-89, January.
    27. Mario Cruz-Gonzalez & Ivan Fernandez-Val & Martin Weidner, 2016. "probitfe and logitfe: Bias corrections for probit and logit models with two-way fixed effects," Papers 1610.07714, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2017.
    28. Kaiji Chen & Yi Wen, 2017. "The Great Housing Boom of China," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 73-114, April.
    29. Matthias Keese & Hendrik Schmitz, 2014. "Broke, Ill, and Obese: Is There an Effect of Household Debt on Health?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(3), pages 525-541, September.
    30. Lingqian Hu & Liming Wang, 2019. "Housing location choices of the poor: does access to jobs matter?," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(10), pages 1721-1745, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shulin Shen & Yiyi Zhao & Jindong Pang, 2024. "Local Housing Market Sentiments and Returns: Evidence from China," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 68(3), pages 488-522, April.
    2. Zhang, Yu & Miller, Eric J., 2025. "Location choice of residential housing supply: An application of the multiple discrete-continuous extreme value (MDCEV) model," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    3. Wu, Yan & Heerink, Nico & Yu, Linhui, 2024. "Beyond the collateral channel: Real estate prices and manufacturing firm investment in China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    4. Wang, Pengcheng & Yang, Xuelin, 2024. "Social trust and household financial decision-making: An empirical study based on the usage of household financial technology," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    5. Chen, Mingli & Fernández-Val, Iván & Weidner, Martin, 2021. "Nonlinear factor models for network and panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 220(2), pages 296-324.
    6. Qu, Gan & Wang, Zongyi, 2025. "Digital finance development and tourism consumption growth: An analysis of the moderating effect based on household wealth," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    7. Dong, Zhanyu & Li, Xuchao & Li, Yingying & Lin, Jietong, 2025. "Relocating innovation within firms: The impact of real estate booms on innovation transfer," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    8. David Córcoles & Carmen Díaz-Mora & Rosario Gandoy & Ángela Triguero, 2023. "The role of servitization in international entrepreneurship: An analysis for Spanish manufacturing firms," Journal of International Entrepreneurship, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 214-244, June.
    9. Liu, Zhixiao & Zhang, Xue, 2025. "Commercial pension insurance and risky financial asset allocation: Evidence from elderly Chinese families," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    10. Lin, Yigang & Yang, Wenhua, 2025. "Aging population, technological innovation, and income disparity among residents," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    11. Oikarinen, Elias & Peltola, Risto & Valtonen, Eero, 2015. "Regional variation in the elasticity of supply of housing, and its determinants: The case of a small sparsely populated country," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 18-30.
    12. Daniel Czarnowske & Amrei Stammann, 2019. "Fixed Effects Binary Choice Models: Estimation and Inference with Long Panels," Papers 1904.04217, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2020.
    13. David W. Hughes, 2021. "Estimating Nonlinear Network Data Models with Fixed Effects," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 1058, Boston College Department of Economics.
    14. Francesco Bartolucci & Claudia Pigini & Francesco Valentini, 2024. "MCMC conditional maximum likelihood for the two-way fixed-effects logit," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(6), pages 379-404, July.
    15. Nicolae Stef, 2021. "Institutions and corporate financial distress in Central and Eastern Europe," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 52(1), pages 57-87, August.
    16. Hughes, David W., 2026. "A jackknife bias correction for nonlinear network data models with fixed effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 253(C).
    17. Xie, Da & Zhang, Min & Bing, Pijing, 2025. "Manual task intensity and male-female wage gap: Evidence from China," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    18. Li, Mulin & Wan, Bonan, 2025. "Consumer credit, family education level, and human capital investment," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    19. Wang, Chao & Geng, Wei, 2025. "Local government debt and household human capital investment," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    20. Artūras Juodis, 2022. "A regularization approach to common correlated effects estimation," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(4), pages 788-810, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:apacel:v:40:y:2026:i:1:p:3-15. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14678411 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.