Gendered Effects of China’s 1994 Housing Privatization on State‑Sector Attachment

China’s 1994 housing privatization decoupled employer-provided housing from state-sector employment, transforming a key component of the danwei welfare system into private property. This reform plausibly reduced job lock, by allowing workers to change jobs without losing housing, and relaxed liquidity institutional considerations through a one-time wealth transfer. Using panel data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) between 1989 to 2004, this paper applies a difference-in-differences-in-differences (DDD) design comparing treated households that received employer-tied housing with untreated households and contrasting women with men. The results show that the reform substantially increased labor mobility among treated men, who were 18 percentage points more likely to enter non-state wage employment after 1994 (s.e. 0.017, p < 0.01). However, the gender differential in this transition is small and statistically insignificant (−3.4 percentage points, s.e. 0.021), suggesting that women did not experience a comparable expansion in private-sector opportunities. Event-study estimates confirm that no systematic differences existed between treated and control groups before the reform, supporting the validity of the identification strategy. Overall, the findings indicate that unbundling housing from employment successfully reduced job lock and promoted market-based mobility but did not narrow gender differences. These results highlight the importance of complementary policies, such as childcare support and equal-opportunity measures, to ensure inclusive labor-market benefits from structural reforms. Overall, the analysis highlights the 1994 reform as a landmark achievement in China’s urban welfare modernization, strengthening household property rights and supporting orderly, high-quality labor-market development.