Manuscript received June 23, 2026; accepted July 1, 2026; published July 16, 2026.

Abstract—In the context of uneven public educational resources, the quality of schools has been capitalized into housing prices, and this phenomenon has exacerbated inequality in urban China. In response to this systemic issue, the Chinese Government is gradually transitioning from rigid single-school zoning to a multiple-school zoning system. This paper presents the theoretical exploration and empirical research on the matching of educational resources and the fluctuation of school district housing premiums under this new policy paradigm. The study utilizes Market Design and Two-sided Matching theories, alongside recent quasi-experimental empirical evidence, to explore how multi-school zoning shapes housing premiums and evaluate its subsequent impact on social welfare. Multi-school zoning introduces probabilistic uncertainty and thus effectively reduces excessive speculation. However, pure random lotteries trigger ex post efficiency losses, while the introduction of voluntary applications and computer-based placement gives rise to strategic manipulation. This paper concludes that adopting a priority-based Deferred Acceptance (DA) matching mechanism is imperative to balance equity, efficiency and residential stability in the allocation of public resources.
 
Keywords—market design, school choice, multi-school zoning, housing premium, social welfare

Cite: Xie Siyuan, "Matching Educational Resources and School District Housing Premiums under China's Multi-School Zoning Policy," International Journal of Learning and Teaching, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 204-207, 2026.

Copyright © 2026 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).