Family and Supported Transitions into homeownership in urban China

This dissertation investigates the increasingly prominent role of family in determining access to homeownership for young people in urban China. The research, going beyond a simple link between housing affordability and intergenerational housing practices, highlights how this phenomenon is shaped by profound transformations in the welfare regime, housing system, and broader demographic and family trends across China. Through a mixed-method approach, this dissertation provides a comprehensive understanding of the complex processes through which family shapes homeownership transitions. First, the research highlights the diversity in forms of family support, including various tenure arrangements, thus expanding beyond the mainstream focus on direct financial transfers from parents to children for home purchases. Second, it emphasizes the role of spatial inequality in shaping family-supported homeownership transitions, specifically the places of origin of young people and parents’ socioeconomic background as well as the access to spatially differentiated housing markets. Third, the investigation underscores the agency of the younger generations in mobilising family resources to navigate the housing market, mortgage debts and financial pressures. The findings reveal how intergenerational housing practices have become central to wealth accumulation and security, and how housing inequalities across class, space, and gender have been entrenched alongside these intergenerational housing dynamics in contemporary China.