Social Integration and Housing Behaviours of Immigrants: Evidence from Singapore’s Public Housing Market
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摘要
This study exploits Singapore’s differential public housing policies as a quasi-natural experiment to identify how social integration affects immigrants’ housing behaviours over time. Using survey data from 1,128 immigrant and local households linked with public rental and resale housing records, the authors find that, in the public rental market, better integration is associated with longer commuting distances (3.04% per additional post-migration year, IV) and lower rents (about 0.67% per year of residency; ~6.7% per decade), with stronger effects for minority groups [page::22][page::24][page::28]. Conversely, in the public resale market, well-integrated naturalised citizens show no price premiums relative to natives, suggesting no further integration effects once integration is well advanced [page::26][page::27]. The results extend spatial assimilation theory to cities with few ethnic enclaves and highlight the temporal dimension of integration in shaping housing trajectories [page::27].
