Owning a house has been an obsession in China. Many agree that one cannot qualify as a member of the middle class if you do not own your home. What is the situation in your country? And what is your opinion on this obsession in China?

Owning one's own house seems to be an obsession in Anglo-Saxon countries (US and UK) and in China. But it is not so in most of Europe or other countries. In Germany, for example, the most economically successful country in Europe, only a minority own houses and the majority live in rented accommodation.

Actually owning property is simply a form of ensuring security of tenure, saving and an anticipation of a possible capital gain - in particular saving for one's children.

Where there is a serious economic problem is if people expect to achieve a capital gain on owning property. This is economically dangerous.

A house in which you live is not a productive asset which increases output. So an increase in the value of a house is simply a transfer from someone else - someone who does not own a house. This type of transfer is not economically productive and therefore the economy should not be organized in such a way that people make large capital gains on houses.

The Anglo-Saxon and Chinese obsession, is to some degree, economically destabilizing. The financial benefits used by the Anglo-Saxon states to increase house ownership are very big, however, and for that reason, I own my own house despite the comments I made.

What do you think the Chinese middle class can do to become more involved in social issues and develop their own voice?

As the Chinese middle class develops it will find, like the middle class in any other country, that it requires social and government action to improve standard of living and that increases in personal income alone is not enough.

Problems such as clean air, freedom from pollution, education, and health all require government as well as personal participation. Demand for social and government action to improve living standards will increase as the middle class grows in China.

Do you think the Chinese middle class will change the country, and perhaps, the world in some way?

The emergence of a very large Chinese middle class will change the entire world. The present total population of all countries defined by the World Bank as 'high income' is 16 percent of the world's population. The definition of a 'high income' economy is one with a GDP per capita of slightly over $12,000 per year. It will take China about 15 years to achieve that level.

But China has 19 percent of the world's population.

China becoming a 'high income' economy, accompanied by the creation of a very large Chinese middle class, will more than double the percentage of the world's population living in high-income economies and double the size of the world's middle class. This will equivalently double the world's demand for cars, higher quality electrical goods, high quality health care, foreign travel, entertainment and so on. The creation of a large Chinese middle class will change the entire economic structure of the world.

Within China, the creation of a middle class will particularly boost the demand for service sectors such as education, health, media, travel, entertainment. This will be an even greater increase than for high quality manufactured goods. This is because expenditure on service sectors rises much more rapidly than on physical products.

Related:

The middle-class trap

Class counts but hard to tell who's who