A study of the impact of housing condition on family formation in Hong Kong

Abstract

Under the rapid economic evolution around the globe in past few decades, human societies had undergone distinctive way of demographic structural change after the second demographic transition. Individuals are losing interest in forming new families, low and declining marriage and childbearing rates are overwhelming around the developed countries. Total fertility rate has been long fallen below the subreplacement fertility level, which prompts attention from scholars and policies makers to the values towards traditional marriage, disconnection in marriage and procreation, resulting in the decline in general population and ramification on economy. Numerous studies were carried out to investigate the underlying rationale for personal and society implication. In view of the global trend, western countries are not the only regions suffered from the tide of demographic issue, asian cities, especially Hong Kong has attained the lowest total fertility rate in the region. The trend of total fertility in Hong Kong is observed falling more rapidly than global trend. Despite the general factor like socio-economic changes, scholars suggest housing price could be one significant factor accounting for the faster declining trend by adoption of macro-level data for the linkage between housing price and people’s behaviors in family formation. However, previous studies were lack of attention to the impact of other household-level determinants of housing condition on people’s values to family formation. To have a better understanding of their consideration towards forming families and important factors from housing condition, this study aims to explore the significant household-level determinants and people’s specific consideration among cohorts. After conducting quantitative survey with 122 participants and qualitative survey with 4 interviewees, the general impact of the significant household-level determinants of housing condition on people’s values to family formation is obtained. The result suggested that dwelling space has surmounted housing cost being the most significant direct determinant, while number of rooms ranked the third. Besides, cost for raising children and derived general support from family are the most significant indirect determinants. Interestingly, people consider eligibility of PRH and status of residing with parents less important in context of Hong Kong. During the interviews, no matter which cohorts, they are all suffered from different level of difficulties in housing condition in achieving their wishes in family formation. Benefited by their inputs, this study raises several recommendations for policies makers and non-government organizations for consideration of addressing their needs to ease their route to family formation.