Urbanization and Housing Investment

Dasgupta, Basab ; Lall, Somik V. ; Lozano-Gracia, Nancy

World Bank Group, Washington, DC

关键词: ACCOUNTING;    AFFILIATED ORGANIZATIONS;    AFFORDABLE HOUSING;    AGRICULTURE;    ASSET CLASS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7110
RP-ID  :  WPS7110

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper provides the first systematicempirical assessment of the pace at which housing investmenthas responded to rising demand from urbanization.Theassessment used National Accounts Statistics to build a dataset of residential housing investment for more than 90countries. The data set explicitly accounts for investmentby households, the government, and the private sector. Theanalysis finds that housing investment follows an S-shapedtrajectory taking off around per capita GDP of about $3,000(US$2005) and tapering down at per capita GDP around $36,000(US$2005).The analysis also finds that between 2001 and2011, housing investment in low-income economies averaged4.56 percent of gross domestic product and 9.12 percent inupper-middle-income economies. An important finding is thatcountries in Sub-Saharan Africa have housing elasticitiessimilar to comparable low-income and lower-middle-incomeeconomies. In financing housing investment, the paper findsthat developing countries tend to rely much more on domesticsavings and government debt, whereas high-incomeOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Developmentcountries lever capital markets by tapping foreign savings.Not only does excessive reliance on domestic savings andgovernment debt increase the sensitivity of housinginvestment to the cyclicality of growth of gross domesticproduct, it also can potentially crowd out investments inhealth and education.