The Causes of China's High Housing Price-to-income Ratio and Its Impacts on Urban Population Concentration:Theory and Evidence

Different from the steady population situation of the foreign big cities,China' s rapid urbanization,college expansion,family planning policy and other factors have made the large and medium-sized cities face more and more new housing demand from migration population in recent years.Too many people go chasing too few houses,and the low degree of economic agglomeration lead to residents' low income relatively,so China's housing prices rose too fast beyond residents' income level,forming high housing price-to-income ratio.Such a high ratio had increased Immigrants' living costs from the two aspects of living and consumption,but the results using the national 35 large and medium-sized cities' empirical data show that the high housing price-to-income ratio not only plays negative impact on big cites' population concentration,but also make big cities become more attractive to people,because of great benefits such as more complete living facilities,more employment opportunities,better health condition and culture environment.