Urban households in China have accumulated substantial housing wealth over recent decades, driven by rapid growth in homeownership rates and housing values. However, the ways in which housing wealth has evolved under changing market conditions remain insufficiently understood. There is also limited research on how housing price appreciation is distributed across households and how it contributes to disparities in wealth accumulation. This study addresses this gap using data from the China Household Finance Survey. Employing a GSEM, we examine households with varied socioeconomic characteristics – including hukou status, education, occupation and income – entering the housing market at different times and via divergent channels, to identify the factors influencing housing appreciation rates. The findings reveal considerable variation among social groups and across city tiers, highlighting the significance of timing and geographical disparities. The results suggest that the dynamics of housing as an investment asset are reinforcing existing inequalities, underscoring the need for policies that promote access while addressing wealth inequality and market distortions.

The push-pull framework remains a useful lens for residential mobility, yet its classic formulation presumes largely market-generated opportunity gradients. In China's state entrepreneurial urbanism, however, these gradients are actively (re)produced through state-led redevelopment, land-based development, and uneven infrastructure provision, potentially reshaping how "push" and "pull" operate across space. Leveraging mobile phone signaling data from Shanghai amid concurrent suburban new-town expansion and inner-city renewal, this study develops an institutionally informed push-pull analytical framework to examine how employment-related factors and residential environmental conditions jointly correlate with relocation decisions. We compare drivers across mobility types by distinguishing inward versus outward moves and short-versus long-distance relocations. Results show that suburban development has not eroded the continuing pull of the urban core, while mobility patterns are most consistently associated with employment opportunities, housing availability/affordability, and access to green space. Clear heterogeneity emerges across direction-distance combinations: long-distance inward moves are more strongly associated with improved job-housing proximity and richer urban facilities, whereas long-distance outward moves correlate more with lower housing prices and greener environments. Shortdistance outward moves are linked to incremental improvements in housing conditions and nearby green space. By foregrounding institutionally produced opportunity gradients and direction-distance contingencies, this study reexamines the push-pull framework in Chinese megacities and offers policy-relevant implications for coordinating employment, housing, and environmental planning during urban renewal and suburban development.

Existing studies on migrant housing have predominantly focused on access to homeownership and housing conditions in destination cities, largely overlooking the dimension of asset accumulation. In recent decades, an increasing number of migrants have achieved homeownership in their destination cities, hometowns, or elsewhere. However, where they purchase property significantly impacts the wealth they are able to accumulate. Drawing on data from the "Employment Status and Living Conditions of Migrants in Yangtze River Delta Cities" survey, this study investigates how migrants with varying socioeconomic characteristics and migration patterns choose the location for entering homeownership within the urban hierarchy, thereby influencing their housing wealth accumulation. The findings reveal that owning property in destination cities leads to higher market values and faster housing appreciation compared to owning property in hometown cities. However, only migrants with institutional and economic advantages, as well as those originating from higher-tier cities, are more capable of securing homeownership in destination cities, thereby boarding the escalator of housing wealth accumulation. By adopting a spatial perspective, this study highlights the profound impact of a city's position within the urban hierarchy on migrants' asset accumulation. The findings offer policy implications aimed at reducing institutional barriers, such as housing purchase restrictions, to enhance migrants' access to the property ladder, promote asset accumulation, and support greater social integration.

Downward migration across the urban hierarchy among young graduates is becoming increasingly prominent in urban China. However, the underlying drivers, particularly the dynamics of the two-stage migration process from domicile to university and from university to workplace, remain insufficiently understood. Drawing on data from the 2022 University Graduate Employment Survey across eight major Chinese cities and employing a recursive bivariate probit model, this study finds that over 20% of graduates relocate to lower-tier cities for employment. Notably, those who experienced upward mobility during domicile-to-university migration are especially prone to downward migration in the employment stage, primarily due to high living costs, limited family capital, and intense job market competition in top-tier cities. Beyond economic constraints, cultural preferences and familial obligations shape graduates' location choices, with many opting to return to their hometowns or culturally familiar regions. Social networks, particularly kinship and alumni ties, also exert a significant influence, while individual characteristics outweigh city-level factors in determining migration outcomes. Regional heterogeneity analysis reveals that graduates are driven by intra-provincial opportunity optimization within developed economies in eastern region, whereas central-western graduates are more likely to engage in cross-provincial migration, either pushed by limited local opportunities or pulled by the prospect of returning to their hometowns. These findings underscore the need for place-sensitive and relationally informed graduate retention strategies that strengthen alumni networks, support hometown returnees, and better align talent policies with graduates' familial backgrounds and mobility trajectories.

In the modern knowledge economy, talents are widely recognized as a critical driver of regional economic development. This study examines the two-stage migration of Chinese university graduates - from home region to university and then to the labour market - based on first-hand survey data. The findings reveal that graduates who previously migrated for higher education are more inclined to migrate again for employment. Furthermore, university quality emerges as a key factor shaping mobility patterns, positioning universities either as magnets or as dispersers of talent. Specifically, at the education-migration stage, higher-quality universities significantly increase the likelihood of students migrating out of their home provinces to pursue higher education. At the employment-migration stage, graduates from top-ranking universities exhibit higher mobility when entering the labour market. These results underscore the role of universities as pivotal nodes in the national talent mobility system and highlight the heterogeneity among universities in their capacity to attract and retain human capital based on their quality.

Internal migrants in China, similar to international immigrants, frequently confront barriers that hinder their integration into their destination cities. Improving the social integration of these migrants has become a central focus for both policy-makers and academia, forming an essential element of China's new urbanization strategy. Despite the mounting scholarly interest in this topic, existing studies primarily focus on examining the influence of individual characteristics and destination attributes on migrants' social integration, but often neglect migrants' diversifed migration patterns along the urban hierarchy, which may affect the degree of social integration achieved by migrants in their chosen destination. This study examines how migrants' demographic and socioeconomic attributes are associated with their hierarchical migration pattern and thereby affect their social integration based on the data from the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey. The results reveal a nuanced association between hierarchical migration (the difference in city tiers between the place of origin and destination) and social integration, characterized by a distinct nonlinear, inverted "U" shape. Importantly, this study underscores the pivotal mediating role of hierarchical migration. Individuals with different characteristics (age, gender, married, higher educational attainment, Chinese Communist Party membership, and urban hukou) made different migration choices, resulting in varying levels of social integration. Specifically, migrants who are married and possess higher educational credentials tend to move to bigger cities, which would hinder their overall social integration. This study deepens our understanding of migrants' social integration by highlighting the pivotal role of hierarchical migration, which can be traced back to a significant imbalance of regional development.

Migration is inherently associated with risks, uncertainties and various costs, many of which arise from barriers imposed by distance. Based on a university graduate survey conducted in 2022, this study examines the influence of multidimensional distance on the destination choices of graduate migrants, which comprises of geographical distance, administrative distance, cultural distance, informational distance and industrial distance, taking into account the dual reference points of both the hometown and the city of the university. The research findings suggest that, for university graduates who migrate to destinations distinct from both their home city and university city, the distance with the home city plays a more important role than the distance with the city of university, in determining their destination choices. Thereinto, the geographical distance, administrative distance and informational distance with hometown have a stronger influence on the destination choices of graduates, while the cultural distance with the city of university matters more in affecting their migration decisions. The industrial distance with the destination city, nevertheless, has a dual character: the complementarity of industry structure to the city of university increases the in-migration of graduates, while the similarity of industry structure to the hometown encourages the in-migration of graduates. In addition, the impacts of multidimensional distances on destination choices of graduates vary with their degree levels, hukou status and self-assessed risk attitude. This study will provide enlightenment to the formulation of talent policies in different types of cities to attract university graduate migrants.

An increasing number of Chinese international students are choosing to return to China after completing their studies abroad. Despite this trend, the factors influencing their choice of employment city within China remain understudied. Using resume data from the "Maimai" online professional social networking platform, this study illustrates the geographic distribution of Chinese overseas returnees. By employing a random forest model, we join the job-versus-amenity debate on human capital migration by investigating the relative importance of economic factors and amenities. The findings demonstrate that overseas returnees are predominantly clustered in eastern cities, particularly Beijing and Shanghai, forming a "dual-core and multi-center" pattern. Economic factors, such as the average annual wage and the average house prices, are the primary determinants influencing the choices of employment city for returnees. Urban amenities, particularly consumer and cultural facilities, and social atmosphere, also contribute to attracting returnees. These factors exhibit threshold effects, exerting significant influence only beyond specific values. Furthermore, the effect of amenities is largely confined to cities with higher average annual wages. This study reveals that the attractiveness of urban amenities to talent differs across locations with varying levels of economic development, calling for a deepened understanding of the dynamics behind talent migration.

Housing has appreciated at a record pace in the 2010s in many countries, and increasingly accounts for a significant share of total household wealth. This paper investigates the disparities in the accumulation of housing wealth by exploring the relationship between income status and housing price appreciation. Drawing on data from the 2017 China Household Finance Survey, our findings reveal that lower-income households do not experience proportionate increases in housing wealth compared to their higher-income counterparts. This inequality has also been widened by multiple property ownership. Purchasing lower-valued homes does not explain the disparities in the housing price appreciation. Lower-income households are more likely to own low-quality homes, leading to smaller annual housing price appreciation. Lower-income homeowners are less likely to change their primary residence since they moved in. Trading-up strategies or frequent moving, which help to realise higher annualised price appreciation, are more likely to be deployed by high-income households. Meanwhile, lower-income households are less likely to use mortgage loans than higher-income households. However, this does not impede annual housing price appreciation. This paper also finds that the disparities in housing price appreciation among different income groups are particularly greater in higher-tier cities and in cities that implemented the housing purchase restriction policies, as housing prices are more spectacular in these types of cities. Moreover, the disparities can be greater among households that obtained their dwellings through the second-hand commercial housing market and the self-built housing market. These findings suggest that housing wealth may reinforce income inequalities.

This paper examines owner‐renters, households that rent their current residence while owning property elsewhere, using data from the 2013 and 2019 China Household Finance Survey. It explores how household characteristics influence owner‐renting and the drivers of this phenomenon. Owner‐renting stems from the ‘rigid demand’ of becoming a homeowner and the inability to purchase a dwelling that fulfils residential needs. It serves primarily as a transitional strategy for households striving to achieve owner‐occupation, but also as an alternative tenure for disadvantaged households and households prioritising flexibility or lifestyle. Institutional restrictions, especially the hukou , contribute to this arrangement, although their influence has diminished. Ongoing housing affordability challenges in higher‐tier cities further reinforce this practice and are likely to persist in the medium to long term. This study enriches the understanding of homeownership and offers policy implications for urban integration and urban governance of migrants in an era of financialised housing markets.

As China transitions to high-quality economic development, the innovation-driven growth model places increasing demand on the high-tech industry, highlighting the critical role of high-tech talent in enhancing regional competitiveness. Existing studies have primarily focused on talent distribution patterns at national or provincial levels, with limited exploration at the city level. Furthermore, most studies concentrate on the distribution patterns and influencing factors at a single stage, treating talented individuals as a homogeneous group without a comparative analysis of the differences in talent distribution across employment stages, educational qualifications, or school levels. To address these gaps, in this study, we employed big data on high-tech talent resumes spanning 2003 to 2021 using spatial analysis techniques and spatial econometric models to examine the spatial distribution patterns and influencing factors of high-tech talent across different employment stages at the urban scale. Additionally, we explored the heterogeneity of the influencing factors at various educational qualifications and institutional levels. The results reveal the following. First, high-tech talents in China are predominantly clustered in economically developed eastern coastal regions, provincial capitals, municipalities, and urban agglomerations. Compared with the initial employment stage, the spatial concentration of high-tech individuals intensified during the current employment stage. The number of dense clusters in the eastern coastal regions decreased, whereas the number of non-dense clusters in the western and northeastern regions increased. A strengthened "high-high" clustering pattern around central cities in urban agglomerations reflects the increasing preference for high-tech talents in such areas. Second, the factors influencing the distribution of talented individuals differ significantly across employment stages, and are shaped by economic conditions, amenities, talent policies, and administrative hierarchies. Economic factors, particularly income levels, play a dominant role during the initial employment stage, whereas amenities become more influential in the current stage, reflecting a growing focus on quality of life as material needs are met. Talent policies significantly affected talent distribution at both stages. Third, the distribution of high-tech individuals exhibits heterogeneity across educational qualifications and university tiers. High human capital groups, such as postgraduate degree holders and graduates from "double first-class" universities, demonstrate a stronger preference for amenity factors, particularly during the current employment stage. These findings have important implications for understanding talent distribution dynamics, optimizing talent allocation, and fostering supportive environments for talent development. This underscores the urgent need for effective management of high-tech talent mobility, formulation of targeted and actionable talent policies, and enhancement of talent governance modernization.

In recent years, the number of Chinese university graduates has been progressively increasing, and their employment situation has become increasingly poor under the influences of the COVID-19 epidemic and downward economic pressure. The employment issue of university graduates has attracted considerable attention. The migration of university graduates is synthetically affected by multiple factors including individual-, family-, and city-level factors. A systematic theoretical framework of the influencing mechanism of the migration of university graduates, which combines these factors, is lacking. Moreover, extant studies have scarcely investigated the migration of university graduates from the overall perspective of family capital, let alone different factors considered by graduates with different family capital levels in the migration decision-making process. The role of human capital in the relationship between the family capital and migration of graduates still remains unknown. To address this gap, based on first-hand survey data on the migration of new graduates from 78 universities in eight cities in 2022, this study employs a nested logit model to examine the influencing factors on the intercity migration of university graduates from both the individual and city levels, and reveals the dual influencing mechanism of family capital (economic, cultural, and social capital) and human capital (education qualification, university type, student cadre status, academic records, certificates, and internship experience). The results demonstrate that: 1) Family capital exerts a significantly positive impact on the intercity migration of university graduates. Graduates with higher levels of family capital are more inclined to move to higher-level cities. Compared with graduates whose parents have an annual income level below 90 thousand RMB and highest education qualification below a college degree, graduates whose parents have an annual income level above 90 thousand RMB and highest education qualification above a college degree are more likely to flow to first-tier and second-tier cities. 2) The influence of family capital on the migration of graduates presents significant heterogeneity. When choosing employment cities, graduates with a higher level of family capital pay more attention to urban economic and amenity factors. Compared with graduates with lower levels of family capital (represented by lower parental income levels, lower educational qualification levels, and parents' non-managerial or professional occupations), graduates with higher levels of family capital (opposite to their counterparts) are more affected by income levels, living costs, environmental quality, medical resources, and cultural resources, in selecting employment cities. 3) The human capital of graduates plays both a positive mediating role and a certain degree of a negative moderating role in the impact of family capital on the migration of graduates. All the variables of human capital play a positive mediating role, that is, family capital positively influences the migration of graduates by affecting their human capital; however, some variables of human capital (student cadre status, academic records, certificates, and internship experience) play a negative moderating role, that is, the human capital accumulated in the university can weaken the impacts of family capital on the migration of graduates. By introducing a spatial perspective, this study provides not only empirical evidence for the response to the social concern about whether getting good jobs depends on family background or personal efforts, but also scientific references for promoting the full employment of graduates and guiding the rational talent flows.

Most studies on residential segregation in China have primarily relied on decennial population census data, which lacks the granularity and timeliness needed to capture segregation dynamics with higher frequency. Drawing on georeferenced housing market transaction data between 2012 and 2023 in Shanghai and Beijing, and employing fine-grained spatial segregation analysis techniques, including k-nearest neighbor approaches (k-NN) and modifiable grids, we find that housing segregation by price and size increased between 2012 and 2018, followed by a decline thereafter, particularly in the larger-sized and higher-priced market segments. While segregation levels are generally comparable between the two cities, Shanghai exhibits higher segregation for the top 20 % of apartments, while Beijing shows greater segregation for the bottom 20 %. Segregation is highest for prices, followed by rents, with housing size showing the lowest segregation. Expanding the analysis to 11 major Chinese cities, we suggest that high and rising housing prices are associated with increasing segregation, particularly in cities with lower initial segregation. Methodologically, this paper demonstrates that leveraging big transaction and listing data, alongside utilizing fine-grained spatial analysis, can advance our understanding of urban inequalities.

Access to higher education is considered an important avenue for upward social mobility. However, the question of which city to attend university and its influence on migration trajectories remains underexplored. Drawing on a 2022 survey of university graduates from eight Chinese cities, this study examines how the location of a university affects mobility within the urban hierarchy. The findings reveal that universities function as springboards in graduates' migration trajectories. The study highlights the spatial role of universities in talent distribution, a process that is both shaped by and reinforces the hierarchical structure of the urban system.

With China's urban development entering an era of"stock-based growth",urban re-generation has risen to a strategic level of constructing a new national development pattern and promoting high-quality urban development.The practice of urban regeneration has gradually shifted from focusing mainly on the reconstruction and transformation of the physical environ-ment to a sustainable urban regeneration model that considers economic,social,and environ-mental goals.However,there is still a lack of a systematic and comprehensive theoretical framework for sustainable urban regeneration to guide research and practice.Therefore,this pa-per attempts to use the Theory of the Production of Space as the foundation,combined with an analysis of urban regeneration practices in China over recent decades,to construct a systematic and comprehensive theoretical framework for sustainable urban regeneration in Chinese con-text from the perspective of spatial reproduction.This theoretical framework includes five core elements:sustainable regeneration goals,government,market,society,and spatial reproduction.It summarizes the composition,power,capital,and interests of the three categories of stakehold-ers(government,market,and society)and their different focuses and modes of competition within the reproduction operation mechanism.The paper suggests that a sustainable urban re-generation model should emphasize both comprehensive value and benefits in spatial reproduc-tion and equitable distribution,as well as consider sustainable pathways for spatial reproduc-tion under the constraints of limited regeneration capital.

Research on housing inequality has predominantly focused on the differentiation of housing states at specific time points in contemporary China, with minimal attention given to understanding how individuals’ housing states evolve throughout their life course. This study, based on a retrospective survey conducted in Shanghai between 2018 and 2019, investigates the progression of residents’ housing careers and the influence of both ascribed and achieved factors. The findings reveal that individuals from privileged families are secured with advantages and even already become homeowners at the outset of their housing careers. In contrast, the influence of achieved factors takes time to manifest; for instance, educational attainment may not be determinant initially but positively correlates with upward mobility in a later stage, particularly among younger cohorts. Furthermore, it has been found permanent migrants who transferred to local hukou perform well in achieving upward housing mobility. Despite lacking the advantages of ascribed factors, they manage to catch up and even surpass locals through their proactive efforts. This study underscores the significance of adopting a temporal perspective in comprehending housing inequality and also emphasizes the dynamic influence of both ascribed and achieved factors on individuals’ housing outcomes in a restructured housing market.

This research considers the intersection between intergenerational support, housing outcomes, and spatially-differentiated housing markets to examine the transmission and reproduction of housing inequality across generations. Specifically, it aims to advance the understanding of the relationship between parental backgrounds and young adults' housing tenure as well as residential location outcomes. Drawing on original survey data collected in Shanghai over 2018 and 2019, this study, firstly, reveals both Chinese young adults' strong tendency to enter homeownership early in their housing trajectories and the key role of parental support. Alongside the influence of parental financial support and other socioeconomic resources in housing market entry, the analysis shows the importance of living in parental-owned housing in enabling subsequent homeownership access. Secondly, we investigate the spatial dimension of the intergenerational reproduction of inequality. While descriptive analyses imply more advantaged parental backgrounds structure access to higher value and to some extent higher gain submarkets, our regression modelling points to significant effects being concentrated among individual socioeconomic characteristics. We contend that research integrating both tenure and spatial housing market dynamics is valuable in understanding the transmission of housing inequalities across generations.

Using data from the 2017 China Migrants Dynamics Survey, this study employs generalized structural equation modeling to examine the effects of migrants' places of origin and socioeconomic status on their destination choice and access to homeownership in the destination city. The analyses reveal significant disparities in access to homeownership among migrants from different places of origin. Furthermore, the position of the destination city in the urban hierarchy not only has a direct impact on migrants' access to homeownership but also plays an important mediating role. This study highlights the spatial foundations of housing inequality and builds an analytical framework that links spatial mobility with social mobility. Our findings have significant implications for housing policies and practices aimed at improving the housing conditions of new-generation migrants.

Previous housing studies have primarily focused on the differences in homeownership between local residents and the floating population. However, the increasing proportion of new residents has been largely overlooked. Furthermore, the ‘snapshot’ approach focusing on homeownership transitions overlooks the multiple and shifting housing states over the life course. Based on survey data collected in Nanjing, this study analyses the differences in housing careers among local residents, new citizens, and the floating population using sequence analysis, and examines the underlying factors using a multinomial logistic regression model. The results indicate that local residents enjoy a distinct advantage in their housing careers, achieving homeownership earlier. Although the floating population and new citizens typically start in rental housing, their housing trajectories diverge over time. New citizens are more likely to achieve upward housing careers, whereas the floating population is more likely to be ‘trapped’ in rental housing. These disparities intensify across age cohorts which can be traced to broader changes in the housing system. This study provides a temporal lens for understanding housing inequality and emphasises the significance of the floating population in overcoming the limitations of the hukou system and housing market through efforts to achieve upward housing careers.

Student mobility, as a significant component of population movements, shapes the distribution of intellectual individuals and reflects regional equity in access to higher education. In China, the National College Entrance Examination (Gaokao) traditionally governs university admissions through a province-based quota scheme. In 2003, the Independent Freshman Admission Program (IFAP) was introduced to enhance flexibility and university autonomy in the admissions process, in which no quota is set for each province, breaking geographical constraints. However, the extent to which the IFAP has impacted student mobility remains largely unexplored. This study investigates the province-to-university migration patterns under different higher education admission schemes, revealing IFAP's preference for recruiting students from provinces with well-developed basic education and a large student population. Furthermore, under the IFAP, students tend to flow to the top-ranked universities and concentrate in favourable locations, such as First-tier cities, while the quota allocation shows a more balanced distribution. These findings highlight the crucial role of policy in shaping student mobility, particularly within the context of strong institutional forces, and underscore the need to develop refined policies that balance equitable educational opportunities and regional equity.