ICSA Online Webinar: Educational Differences in Housing Wealth Trajectories and Wealth Accumulation across Generations in China

Topic: Educational Differences in Housing Wealth Trajectories and Wealth Accumulation across Generations in China

Abstract: China’s rising wealth inequality reflects education-linked differences in housing assets rather than stocks. Using CHIP (1995-2008) and CFPS (2010-2022) data, this study shows that college graduates gain housing wealth faster across generations, making housing returns the main driver of educational wealth gaps in China’s housing-based financial system.

Speaker: Zhi Li, PhD Candidate at CASER, NYU Shanghai & Department of Sociology, NYU

Moderator: Yue Qian, Professor of Sociology, the University of British Columbia

Time: Dec 19, 2025, 09:00 AM Hong Kong SAR

Registration link:

https://hku.zoom.us/meeting/register/pbUcWSW_QMyjLU0-OGXmwQ

Summary

Prior research shows that college graduates accumulate more wealth than non-graduates across the life course, with gaps especially pronounced in younger generations in the United States, largely due to stock-linked asset expansion. Whether the same mechanism explains China’s similar patterns of educational wealth accumulation remains unclear. This study uses China—where financialization is centered on housing rather than stocks—to examine how educational differences in housing wealth trajectories shape inequality across generations. Data from the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP, 1995, 2002, 2008) and the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022) show that the college premium in housing wealth increases with age and is especially pronounced in younger generations. For the 1950–1959 cohort, housing surpassed safe financial assets as the dominant contributor only after midlife, explaining most of the premium, whereas later cohorts reached this point much earlier; stocks remained marginal for all cohorts born after the 1950s. Housing returns account for a substantial share of the college wealth premium, particularly after midlife and among younger generations. These findings demonstrates that China’s housing-centered financialization has made housing assets the critical engine of educational wealth inequality across generations, in contrast to the U.S. stock-centered pathway.

Bio

Zhi Li is a PhD candidate at the Center for Applied Social and Economic Research (CASER) at NYU Shanghai and the Department of Sociology at New York University. His research focuses on social inequality, economic sociology, and computational social science. He is currently working on projects examining wealth inequality in the era of financialization and the consequences of network heterogeneity. His work has been published in Social Indicators Research, Scientific Reports, International Journal for Equity in Health, and Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, with additional work currently under revision and resubmission at Demography and Journal of Health and Social Behavior. He has received the 2025 Robert D. Mare Graduate Student Paper Award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility.