Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Cities journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities Multiple home ownership in Chinese cities: An institutional and cultural perspective Youqin Huang a, ⁎ , Daichun Yi b , William A.V. Clark c a Department of Geography and Planning, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY 12222, United States of America b China Household Finance Survey and Research Center, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, China c Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, United States of America ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Housing Homeownership Multiple homes Housing policy Housing inequality China ABSTRACT China is a country of homeowners, where>80% of households own their homes and>20% of urban house- holds own multiple homes. China achieved this unprecedented high rate home ownership in a short period of three decades. While we have a growing understanding of homeownership in general we are less clear about the process and outcomes of multiple home ownership in China. This paper examines the patterns of and driving forcesformultiplehomeownership,andexplorestheimplicationsforhousinginequalityinChinesecities.While socio-economic factors appear critical in China as is the case in the West, we argue for an institutional and cultural perspective to better understand multiple home ownership in China. The empirical analyses using 2015 China Household Finance Survey show that households who received housing subsidies, have urban registration, experienced demolition and resettlement, have school age children attending key schools, and have sons are morelikelytoownmultiplehomes.Byfocusingontheinstitutionalandculturalforces,thispaperbetterexplains the unprecedented high rate of multiple homeownership in Chinese cities, and demonstrates how various housing policies in China have unintentionally contributed to multiple homeownership and thus housing and wealth inequality. 1. Introduction China is a country of homeowners, where>80% all households own their homes (well above the rates for what have been defined as ownership socities in the West) (Clark, Huang, & Yi, 2019). If home- ownershipisanimportantindicatorfortheChineseDream,asitwasfor the American Dream, it is fair to say that most Chinese have achieved their Chinese Dream. This is a spectacular achievement especially given the fact that public rental was the dominant tenure in the 1980s in Chinese cities, and homeownership has recently declined in Western countries. Along with the growth of ownership there has been an ex- pansion of multiple home ownership. More than 20% of urban house- holds (16% of rural households) own multiple homes, which is also much higher than many developed nations (e.g. 3%–4% in Australia and Northern Ireland; 13% in the U.S. and about 10% in Britain (Re- solution Foundation, August 2017; Paris, 2010; Choi, Hong, & Scheinkman, 2014). Residential property has made up>60% of household assets in China since 2008, while the same proportion is about 30% in U.S. (NAHB, 2013; Huang, 2013; Xie & Jin, 2015). There is a long history of the rich and powerful in China owning multiple homes (Feng & Liu, 2000), but the middle class ownership of multiple homes is a relatively new phenomenon (Huang, 2004). Clearly, there is a conundrum where there is overbuilding and “ghost towns” on the one hand, and where millions of migrants and urban poor lack basic housing on the other hand. A better understanding of multiple home ownership and its implications for housing inequality in Chinese cities is central to understanding the Chinese housing market and Chinese society. This paper focuses on the recent patterns and processes of multiple home ownership in Chinese cities. Our focus on multiple ownership is set within the significant changes in the Chinese housing market in the past two decades. Since 2003, the housing system in Chinese cities has experienced increased marketization, rapidly increasing housing prices, and growing housing inequality. Official statistics show that housing prices more than dou- bled during 2007–2014 (Chivakul, Lam, Liu, Maliszewski, & Schipke, 2015) and these statistics may in fact underestimate the actual housing https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2019.102518 Received 15 December 2018; Received in revised form 16 October 2019; Accepted 9 November 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: yhuang@albany.edu (Y. Huang). Cities 97 (2020) 102518 0264-2751/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T