Population Ageing, Urbanization and Housing Demand

At present, China is the world’s most populous country in the elderly, accounting for 20% of the world’s elderly population. The authors believe that although the Chinese population ageing level is increasing year by year and the demand for housing is undoubtedly a great negative impact, the rapid urbanization may offset the impact to some extent. Based on this, this paper plans to test the effects of two factors on China’s housing market empirically, combines with the empirical results and experience of the abroad and puts forward the suggestion for the future development of China’s housing market. Using overlapping generation model, we find that population ageing does restrain housing demand. Then, we use the panel data of China’s 31 provinces between 2002 and 2013 to confirm that ageing restrains housing demand, the process of urbanization does the opposite and maybe offsets the negative effect to some extent. At present, China should continue to focus on developing urbanization rapidly, especially focus on the population urbanization. In the process, the government should change its development ideas and increase the supply of public service for population ageing.