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The Gender Wealth Gap in China
Stockholm University, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI). (AME)
Number of Authors: 12024 (English)Report (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

I describe the gender wealth gap in China and explore the reasons behind its expansion in recent decades. The analysis suggests that a combination of China’s 2011 Marriage Law reform and soaring housing prices contribute to this widening gap. The reform shifts the division of housing property upon divorce from an equal (50-50) distribution to one contingent upon the names registered on the housing deed, thereby conferring a wealth advantage to husbands usually registered on the housing deed. Descriptive analysis reveals that men hold more ownership of housing and wealth than women. Specifically, I demonstrate that, post-reform, husbands possess 22% more housing property share than their wives, resulting in an increased housing wealth advantage of 44,884 CNY (equivalent to 7.9 times the annual income of wives in 2010). A dynamic difference-in-differences (DID) analysis indicates that although husbands’ share of property ownership initially surged and then declined post-reform, their proportion of housing wealth continued to increase and stabilize, primarily due to the rapid rise of housing prices. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis shows a greater property share gap among rural couples but a more pronounced wealth gap among urban couples, attributed to rising housing prices in urban areas. The study concludes with a discussion of how seemingly gender-neutral policies can have gendered economic effects by interacting with traditionally gendered societal norms.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2024.
Keywords [en]
gender gap in property; gender wealth gap; property division
National Category
Economics
Research subject
Gender Studies; Economics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-229500OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-229500DiVA, id: diva2:1860392
Available from: 2024-05-24 Created: 2024-05-24 Last updated: 2024-10-30

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf