Sustainability Analysis: Research on China’s Real Estate Economy and Business Based on the CFPS Data

Housing prices exert a notable impact on labor force sustainability, a key component of socioeconomic sustainable development. Skyrocketing housing costs tend to postpone young adults’ marriage and childbearing schedules, reduce their fertility intentions, and eventually lead to a shrinking labor force. It is therefore essential to explore the intrinsic links between housing prices, fertility intentions, and labor force sustainability. Based on data on China’s commercial housing prices, fertility rates, and related socioeconomic indicators from 2005 to 2024, this paper analyzes the theoretical mechanisms of how housing prices affect fertility intentions. It examines the trends of housing prices, housing price-to-income ratios, and disposable income growth at the national level, and further discusses the heterogeneous characteristics of these indicators in eastern, central, western, and northeastern China. In addition, this study analyzes the overall trends and regional disparities of fertility rates, conducts regression analyses combined with mortality rates and population growth rates, and implements correlation analyses between housing prices and fertility rates at national and regional levels. Using 2018 and 2022 CFPS data with control variables including education years, household registration type, employment nature, gender, and number of siblings, an improved interaction terms fixed-effects model is adopted to empirically examine the impact of housing prices on fertility intentions. The reliability of the results is verified by three methods: parallel trend test, alternative estimation method, and data source replacement.