Homeownership, family composition and subjective wellbeing

While a central insight of existing literature is that homeownership contributes to subjective wellbeing, little attention has been paid to the influence of family composition on this relationship. Using a large scale cross-sectional
survey in metropolitan Beijing, our results clarify the important roles of family composition such as the presence of children, marital status in moderating the effects of homeownership on subjective wellbeing. We find that the relationship between homeownership and subjective wellbeing is varied across commodity housing, affordable housing and other housing types. Findings of this study indicate that socio-spatial contextualized nature of subjective wellbeing is dependent upon not just family composition but also other individuals' socioeconomic characteristics and neighborhood built environment.