TITLE:
Research on China’s Housing Provident Fund System: Changing Themes and Development Trends (1994-2026)
AUTHORS:
Longlong Duan, Ting Diao
KEYWORDS:
Housing Provident Fund System, CiteSpace, Bibliometrics, Changing Themes, Development Trends
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.16 No.5,
October
23,
2026
ABSTRACT: The Housing Provident Fund is an important component of China’s policy-based housing finance system, serving both housing finance and housing security functions. Its institutional role, distribution of benefits, and reform direction have long attracted academic attention. Drawing on descriptive bibliometric analysis of 368 journal records on the Housing Provident Fund indexed in the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) from 1994 to 2026, together with CiteSpace knowledge maps based on the 367 records falling within the mapped time span in the converted input, this study aims to systematically review the stages of development, research hotspots, and emerging trends in this field. The findings are as follows: 1) Publication output has generally fluctuated across stages, reaching relative peaks around 1997, 2008, and 2017, before generally declining after 2018. Research has expanded from system operation and management to household welfare, income distribution, and institutional integration. 2) Research hotspots primarily concern institutional attributes and reform pathways, housing security and household housing consumption, equity and income distribution, migrant populations and urban integration, household welfare and firms’ employment effects, and fund operations, risk management, and regional performance evaluation. 3) Future research frontiers mainly include institutional equity in the context of common prosperity, linkages between the Housing Provident Fund and old-age security, cross-regional coordination and integration, and emerging issues such as subjective well-being and household welfare.