BIG IDEA | ‘Gender imbalance accounts for about one-third of the increase in China’s housing prices in the last two decades or so.’
‘For those of you who work in emerging markets broadly, you may also want to think about the impact of gender imbalance in Vietnam and India.’
Fund Manager: ‘What percentage of Chinese rising housing prices comes from the gender imbalance?’
Shang-Jin Wei: ‘Gender imbalance accounts for about one-third of the increase in China’s housing prices in the last two decades or so.’
- ‘Other forces clearly also play a role: Rising income; the desire to live in bigger and better houses; in tier 1 cities, speculation; and so on.’
‘These other forces are relatively well understood and well documented.’
- ‘The impact of the gender imbalance is less well understood.’
‘For the Chinese government to successfully address housing price issue, it will have to have a more comprehensive package of the policies, including those that help to moderate gender ratio imbalance.’
- ‘Only in that way will it produce a more sustainable solution.
Fund Manager: ‘I'm surprised at one-third of contribution, that's very high and we know that as a structural factor this is hard to solve.’
- ‘If you look at the globally, whenever a country as this demographic trend on the way down, it's very difficult to reverse, no matter how dedicated the government is.’
Shang-Jin Wei: ‘For those of you who work in emerging markets broadly, I want to suggest you may also want to think about the impact of gender imbalance in Vietnam and India.’
- ‘Both economies with very visible gender-ratio imbalance, with more males than females.’