Time：10:00-11:30, Dec, 23, 2020

Venue：1st Floor, Wangzhong Building 

Speaker：XIE Huihua, Assistant Professor, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen)

This paper explores a discontinuity in house size from China’s housing policies to identify the effect of housing wealth on children’s health and developmental outcomes. It shows that housing wealth gains lower children’s cognitive skills, lessen their belief in an internal locus of control, and decrease children’s self-esteem, but have little impact on children’s physical health or the probability of reporting depression symptoms. Gains in housing wealth during childhood is critical for cognitive development, while personality traits are greatly affected by housing wealth during the adolescent period. Our mechanism analysis suggests that parenting skills play a large role in housing wealth’s effect on child development.