中国城市生活质量的估计及其影响因素——来自中国城镇住户调查的微观证据

Estimation of the quality of life in Chinese cities and its influencing factors: Evidence from Urban Household Survey

中国城市劳动力市场和住房市场的持续性改革,使得城市间劳动力流动约束不断放松,城市土地租金和工资性收入向长期均衡状态收敛,中国城市生活质量得到提升。本文在Roback模型的基础上,首次利用中国城镇住户调查数据,估算了各个地区的城市生活质量。研究发现,在住房市场与劳动力市场达到均衡时,住房成本扣除工资性收入所得到城市生活质量,可以很好地被城市便利性解释。具体来说,自然便利性(如距离海岸线越近、平均气温越低、最低气温越高)越好的城市,其生活质量越高。城市便利性(如户籍人口总量,人口密度、人均生产总值)越多的城市,其生活质量越高。同时,较高的受教育机会也对城市生活质量有显著正向影响。本文发现表明,在市场长期均衡中,居民愿意为了更好的生活环境支付更高的房价,接受更低的工资,继续推进中国劳动力市场与住房市场改革有助于提高城市生活质量。

The continuous reform of China’s urban labor market and housing market has created favorable conditions for China’s labor mobility, and an open urban system has gradually formed. Urban labor mobility has caused urban land rents and wage to converge to a long-term equilibrium condition, which measures the difference in quality of life across the regions. Based on the Roback model, this paper uses tens of thousands of households from 183 cities in China for the first time to measure the difference of quality of life between the cities under the equilibrium of the land market and the labor market. The study found that, first of all, the urban quality of life can be represented by the differences between wage and rents, which correlates with the quality of life derived from other literatures. Secondly, the variation of quality of life across cities could be well explained by amenities(divided into natural amenities and city amenities), the better natural characteristics(such as the appropriate climate, the closer the coastline, the lower the average temperature, the higher the minimum temperature), the higher the quality of life. And for cities with more city amenities(such as more total household registration, higher population density, higher GDP per capita), the quality of life is higher. Moreover, the city attributes associated with social public services, such as education, have large and significant impact on the quality of urban life. The findings of this paper show that labor and housing market reforms create conditions for population mobility. Residents are willing to pay higher housing prices or accept lower wages for a higher quality environment, which integrates the whole labor markets in China.