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| The Determinants of School District Housing Price Premiums from the Perspective of School Quality |
| ZHANG Xun, KOU Jinghan, ZHANG Xin, LV Guangming
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School of Statistics, Beijing Normal University;
Department of Economics,Fordham University |
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Abstract Many studies confirm that high-quality educational resources have a capitalization effect that results in price premiums for housing in school districts. High-quality educational resources, as measured by physical capital investment in schools and human capital investment in teachers, may be determined by the quality of a district's school education or the quality of its students (the peer effect). Few studies consider the mechanisms contributing to the formation of high-quality educational resources, especially the extent to which school quality determines the quality of educational resources. However, these mechanisms can be examined by using pricing information from the real estate market.
Using records of second-hand housing transactions in Beijing and unique data regarding education quality at the school level, we are among the first to quantify the power of education quality in explaining school district housing premiums, and thus estimate the economic value of education quality. China's unique institutional background makes it possible to quantify the effect of school quality on school district housing premiums. Unlike most European and American countries, where education funding comes from property taxes, China's education investment depends mainly on general fiscal expenditures by local governments. Hence, in China, the causal influence of education quality on housing prices can be identified by relating school district housing price premiums to education quality data at the school level. This allows us to quantify the relationship between education quality and school district housing premiums and thus explore the mechanisms contributing to the formation of high-quality educational resources.
We use the hedonic model with boundary fixed effects. Specifically, we identify the housing transaction records on both sides of each elite school's attendance zone boundary to control for unobserved factors. We then use this information to calculate each school district's housing price premium. We further match the school education quality data with the second-hand housing transaction records to quantify the role of education quality in the calculated school district housing premiums.
Our results show that education quality, measured by the physical capital investment in schools and the human capital investment in teachers, explains 64.71% of the overall price premium on school district housing. Our results are robust to various confounding factors, including the potential effects of newly built primary schools, education reforms, and access to private schools. Furthermore, we quantify the power of education quality in explaining housing price premiums in three high-quality educational districts in Beijing (Xicheng District, Dongcheng District, and Haidian District). We find that high-quality educational resources come either from concentration of high-quality students within a district or from improvements in school quality due to long-term accumulation of education spending.
From a Chinese policy perspective, the education equalization reforms implemented in recent years promote high-quality equity in compulsory education, which will help curb inflation of school district housing prices and moderate price fluctuations in the real estate market. Our findings indicate that the main sources of school district housing price premiums are physical capital investment and the quality of human capital at the school level, and that recent education reforms can help stabilize housing prices. Therefore, the recent equalization reforms to compulsory education will significantly improve overall school quality by increasing both physical capital investment and human capital investment in weak schools. Furthermore, given the importance of student quality (the peer effect), increasing intergenerational mobility and continuing to advance equalization of opportunities may also be important ways to stabilize school district housing prices.
We contribute to the literature in three ways. First, we add to the literature by discussing the relationships between education quality and school district housing price premiums using a unique dataset that measures education quality at the school level. By matching the education quality data with housing transaction records in the real estate market, we quantify the power of education quality to explain school district housing premiums and explore the mechanisms that contribute to the formation of high-quality education resources. Second, in the context of China, we identify the causal relationship between school quality and housing premiums based on a hedonic model with boundary fixed effects. We take advantage of various stock indicators to measure education quality, including fixed asset value, school building area, the teacher-student ratio, and average teacher salary. Based on the heterogeneous effects identified among three high-quality educational districts in Beijing, we also examine how policy can influence high housing prices in school districts.
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Received: 03 November 2020
Published: 02 December 2021
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