BECE. Newsletter 

Vol.7, No.1, 2021 923 

 

 

 

 

Will the Nine-year Admission System Lead to the In-

crease of School District Housing Price? 

By Zhang, B., Wang, Y., & Liu, J. 
Correspondence to: Zhang, B., Associate Professor, School of Government Pe-

king University, China. Email: zhangbo@pku.edu.cn 

N recent years, people have been pursuing “sky-high school district hous-

ing”, and the price of school district housing continue to soar. The nine-

year admission system is an effort to reduce the pressure of school choice, so 

as to promote the high-quality and balanced development of compulsory ed-

ucation. However, will this admission system directly affect the price of the 

related houses, and continue to pull up the housing prices of certain primary 

school housing districts if it is combined with a high quality junior high 

school? This article published in Education & Economy taking Dongcheng 

District in Beijing as an example, used the difference-in-differences model 

(DID) to explore this issue: 

 Setting the various communities within the seven schools affected 

by the admission system as the “treatment group”, and other 

communities in the same district as the “control group”. In order 

to confirm whether there exists a significant difference in the 

housing prices of those communities since the implementation of 

the policy in 2014, the treatment group was further divided into 

two groups: pre- and post-implementation 

 The housing price data comes from Anjuke, which is the website 

of second-hand housing sales. After collecting the five-year data 

from the first quarter of 2012 to the fourth quarter of 2017, the 

statistical analysis shows that about the average price of second-

hand housing for each community by quarter, the housing price of 

the treatment group was about 3,000 CNY/m
2
 higher than the 

control group, however, according to the data from 2013 in 

Anjuke, the average price of the two groups did not differ a lot. 

Therefore, it was determined that the difference was mainly 

caused by the policy’s implementation. 

 Comparing with the housing prince after the policy implementa-

tion (each quarter of the 4 years) with the price of the first quarter 

in 2013, the analysis of DID model can be roughly concluded that 

the policy indeed pushed up the price of school district housing. 

I 



 

Vol.7, No.1, 2021 924 

But the effect is rather than instantaneous but delays for more 

than one year. 

 Re-calculate the aforementioned base period combinations with 

significant statistical differences, and control the other five varia-

bles that may affect housing prices: 1) Whether it is located in the 

original Chongwen District (taking administrative planning ad-

justment factors into consideration). 2) Distance from the elemen-

tary school. 3) Distance from the city center, subway station, and 

hospital. 4) Community management fees. 5) Community house-

hold amount. 

The results are as follows: 

 The policy plays a significant role in raising housing prices in 

school districts. 

 The impact of the policy on school district housing prices is not 

immediate. The significant difference in housing prices did not 

begin to emerge until the sixth quarter after the implementation. 

 The impact of the consistent policy on housing prices in relevant 

regions is not continuous. The significance of the price difference 

only lasted four quarters. After that, although the housing prices 

in the policy-affected areas are still slightly higher than those in 

other areas, there was no significant difference in the growth 

trend. 

Finally, through the common trend test and counterfactual test, the 

DID model was tested for robustness. The results of the two model tests were 

not obvious, which respectively explained: 1) The housing price of the treat-

ment group and the control group before the policy does not exist. It can be 

considered that the price change trends of the two groups of houses before 

the introduction of the policy are homogeneous. 2) The difference in the av-

erage house price between the treatment group and the control group is pre-

cisely the effect of the nine-year education school policy. 

The research shows that the nine-year admission the system will not 

cause constant growth in the school district housing in the long term, and the 

external impact brought by which is relatively small, hence proved the policy 

itself worth promotion. 

 

Source: Education & Economy, 2020; 36(4):40-49.