Searching for HOMELESS People in China 中国的流浪汉在哪？Unseen China - YouTube Searching for HOMELESS People in China 中国的流浪汉在哪？Unseen China SEARCHING FOR HOMELESS IN CHINA! - YouTube, JERRY GOODE Why is there virtually no homelessness in China? This is a very interesting question. I think there are four reasons homelessness is almost non-existent in China. First is that this prosperity is relatively new. China was still relatively poor even in the late 1980s. So there was an effect on the genetic pool. The less fit were filtered out. (Or viewing this very pessimistically, a huge segment of the population was killed off by starvation and poverty a few decades earlier in the country's history) The second thing is that in a country with a rapidly growing economy, increasing land prices have not kept up with the growth of economic opportunity, so it allows more overall opportunity for the population. This could be discussed in more detail, but capitalism creates much larger levels of opportunity when the economy is growing. We cannot ignore the effect of Chinese culture on this, the very strong ties between parents and children, or the drive to work, extreme thriftiness, discipline and self control. (Some of this is genetic) And lastly, there is some effort by local authorities to sweep any homelessness problems away. So it could be said homelessness is just not very tolerated in the city areas. There are plenty of affordable rural areas in China. The people may live in poverty there, but they will not be homeless. In fact there is almost a little bit of a problem of depopulation in some rural areas, since so many migrants have tried to relocate to cities for better jobs.
There are people literally living in caves in China. Outside the big cities on the East Coast, there is more crushing poverty than perhaps you can imagine.
I suppose that if somebody is a member of Falun Gong or a Christian they would have a huge incentive to live in a cave and get away from Chinese government bureaucrats.
I hate to bring this up, but probably one other major and significant reason the homelessness rate is much lower in China than in the U.S. is the Chinese government strictly cracks down on illegal drugs (and the penalties can be quite harsh). Probably around 30 to 60 percent of the homelessness in American cities is due to drug addiction issues (as the primary factor). In the majority of Chinese households, the parents are very involved in the life of their child, and would never permit their child to get involved in drug use or even associate with the wrong crowd of friends. This is a cultural element of their society (and likely in part genetic, I suspect). Keep in mind that this includes young adults, because children commonly still live in their parent's household years after they reach the age of 18. That is just an element of Chinese culture, and partly due to the traditional poverty in the country. Of course, it is fair to ask why drug use is such a problem in Mexico but not in China, despite both having cultures with strong traditional family ties. I think there might be a genetic component of Chinese being more responsible and following rules. Also fewer single parent households in big Chinese cities. In Mexico, one fourth of all households are headed by a single mother, with that percentage rising to 35% in Mexico City. For comparison, in China, as of 2016, the percentage of parents who are single and have children under 18 years old is 5.9%.
Yes, that is another factor. In China there has been a housing bubble with too much construction of housing. Mostly that is condominiums in very high buildings, and luxury big middle class tract houses that most average Chinese cannot afford. I think though that is probably not actually contributing to any reduction in homelessness, but rather it's more like an issue of there just not being a housing shortage in China. Even if some people cannot afford the most desirable big destination Chinese cities (such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen), there are plenty of "second tier" big cities in China to choose from, that have less wealth and not as good job opportunities. It should also be pointed out that most of the empty condominium units are still not so easy to afford on a typical Chinese worker's income, and many of the buildings were constructed in areas with further away from city cores where there is less demand for housing, further away from the job opportunities. And many of the buildings also were halted in the middle of construction, without completion, and the units may not be fit for people to move into.
