Housing characteristics and health in urban China: A comparative study of rural migrants and urban locals

Abstract China's internal migration has produced a massive population of rural‐to‐urban migrants who face more structural and policy disadvantages in cities, compared with urban locals. The two social groups potentially differ both in their housing characteristics and in the health effects of these housing characteristics. These two differences are fundamentally distinct components that make up the overall impact of housing on health disparity between urban locals and rural‐to‐urban migrants. Using the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey data, this study explores the differing connections of housing characteristics and health between the two groups in today's urban China. Overall, housing type and size have greater effects on the health of migrants, whereas housing instability has a greater impact on the health of urban locals. We utilize the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition method to uncover to what extent the disparity in health between the two groups is due to the difference in their housing characteristics or the difference in the health effect of housing characteristics. In so doing, this study reveals two interrelated but distinct sources of housing‐induced health disparity between urban locals and migrants in urban China.