Society

Housing pressures push marriage back

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-06-04 14:56

BEIJING - A latest survey shows that housing pressure has resulted in 24.8 percent of China's urban youth postponing marriage, and another 21.3 percent postponing having children.

According to the survey conducted by the Xiaokang Magazine, nearly 70 percent of respondents, mainly youth aged from 25 to 35 living in urban areas, said they would not like to get married if they still had to rent.

Related readings:  Property switch loophole blocked  Lending curbs hit nation's property developers  Beijing likely to start property tax reform in 2011  Property prices still rising in most cities

The monthly magazine, a subsidiary of Qiushi (Seeking Truth) Magazine, which is sponsored by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), jointly conducted the survey with Tsinghua University last month to learn the housing situation of youth living in large and medium-sized cities.

Nearly 22 percent of the surveyed people dwell in rented houses, who, however, said they lacked a sense of security.

Many youths living in first-tier cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, said they were considering relocating to second and third-tier cities because of the high price of houses, according to the survey.

However, house prices in second and third-tier cities still posed a headache for Chinese youth, with 65.6 percent of respondents under great pressure, almost the same result as for first-tier cities.

Property prices in major Chinese cities showed mixed growth in April, with more cities reporting month-on-month increases in new commercial housing prices from March and lower prices for resold housing units, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) last month.

The Chinese government has repeatedly stressed its efforts to cool the runaway property market and adopted various measures to curb rising property prices.