The Relationship between Housing Price, Teacher Salary Improvement, and Sustainable Regional Economic Development

In the post pandemic era, most of the countries are facing challenges in economic recovery, while investing in creative human capital such as teachers by increasing their salaries can be one of the policy options for governments to drive development. Housing price, however, may impact the working of these policies. Using the panel data of 31 provincial regions in China during 2006–2018, we evaluated the relationship between housing price, the improvement in teacher salary, and sustainable regional economic development. From the perspective of imbalanced regional development, we discovered the heterogeneity in the rate of return on education investment in terms of teacher salary. Higher teacher salary plays a more active role in the sustainable development of underdeveloped regions, and the crowding-out effect of housing price in Western China is the most intense. The results further provide some policy implications on efficiently promoting the coordinated development of sustainable regional economies by improving the creative human capital cultivators’ salaries. This paper verifies the significance of housing price dynamics from a new perspective based on educational investment. Overall, our study provides theoretical support for improving teachers’ income to promote regional economic development and further provides guidance for the government to carry out macro control to promote regional economic development with changes in housing price dynamics. Our study aims to link land systems, particularly the housing market, to sustainability and public policy.