Abstract: Based on the census data and the Baidu migration data, this paper studies the impact and causes of inter-city population mobility. The analysis of the census data shows that there is a significant correlation between the rising rate of urban housing price and the growth rate of urban population in China. Apart from the registered population, the floating population can also have a rather significant impact. When the floating population increases by 1%, the housing price will increase by 0.36%. While the Baidu migration data shows that the negative feedback of the housing price on population immigration is not significant. How do people choose to move into a city depends mainly on the wage differences between the city and the city originally lived and the distance between the two. No evidence is found that higher housing prices would curb population immigration. Therefore, the cities with higher levels of wage and housing prices will still have a large number of external population, and the housing prices will be further pushed up. To solve the problem of rapid growth in housing prices in the first-tier cities, the key is to enhance the competitiveness of the second-tier and third-tier cities.

Key words: housing price; wage rate; population migration; Baidu migration data