Re: Το Νήμα της Σινοφοβίας
Δημοσιεύτηκε: 30 Οκτ 2022, 16:14
Περί δημογραφίας και κατασκευών (30% του ΑΕΠ)
https://www.ft.com/content/9e75fd6d-75a ... 006662d5cb
For China, the biggest demographic issue now may be how to avoid a Japan-style property crisis, as the strategist Simon Powell argues in a research note published recently by Jefferies. Based on population projections, he says, China may already have enough housing to meet its future needs. As an economy with an unprecedented dependence on housebuilding, it risks making the same mistake as Japan, simply carrying on with new construction as if demographics did not matter.
Then the risk becomes a significant collapse in prices and the sort of correction with which Japan is still wrestling. “There is an important resemblance between Japan in 1990 and China today: a certain kind of growth has reached the end of the line,” says Powell, noting that China’s working-age population has already started to fall, and that both countries have depended on a development model based on sky-high levels of investment and accumulation of physical assets.
There are two main struts in Powell’s argument. The first is that Japan’s experience suggests a strongly asymmetric relationship between population change and housing prices. On the way up, research suggests that every 1 per cent increase in population growth is associated with a 5 percentage point increase in house prices. In reverse, a 1 per cent decline in population produces a much larger price decline.
The second part is that marriage in China is on a downward slope, dropping from 13.5mn in 2013 to 7.6mn in 2021. Unlike in western OECD countries, where the ratio of children born to unmarried couples can be as high as 60 per cent, in China it is probably closer to the Japanese level of below 3 per cent, says Powell. Fewer marriages may, as in Japan, produce a short-term rise in household formation, but ultimately it more likely guarantees the continued falling birth rate.
https://www.ft.com/content/9e75fd6d-75a ... 006662d5cb
For China, the biggest demographic issue now may be how to avoid a Japan-style property crisis, as the strategist Simon Powell argues in a research note published recently by Jefferies. Based on population projections, he says, China may already have enough housing to meet its future needs. As an economy with an unprecedented dependence on housebuilding, it risks making the same mistake as Japan, simply carrying on with new construction as if demographics did not matter.
Then the risk becomes a significant collapse in prices and the sort of correction with which Japan is still wrestling. “There is an important resemblance between Japan in 1990 and China today: a certain kind of growth has reached the end of the line,” says Powell, noting that China’s working-age population has already started to fall, and that both countries have depended on a development model based on sky-high levels of investment and accumulation of physical assets.
There are two main struts in Powell’s argument. The first is that Japan’s experience suggests a strongly asymmetric relationship between population change and housing prices. On the way up, research suggests that every 1 per cent increase in population growth is associated with a 5 percentage point increase in house prices. In reverse, a 1 per cent decline in population produces a much larger price decline.
The second part is that marriage in China is on a downward slope, dropping from 13.5mn in 2013 to 7.6mn in 2021. Unlike in western OECD countries, where the ratio of children born to unmarried couples can be as high as 60 per cent, in China it is probably closer to the Japanese level of below 3 per cent, says Powell. Fewer marriages may, as in Japan, produce a short-term rise in household formation, but ultimately it more likely guarantees the continued falling birth rate.
