(Yicai Global) Dec. 15 -- China's working class families now earn an annual average of CNY154,000 (USD23,300), almost twice as much as households with less stable income sources, but everybody wants more credit, according to a report published by the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu.

The China Household Finance Survey shows that the urban household debt ratio is at just 5.5 percent, but families claim they're only getting half the credit they need, China Business News reported today. Working class households, those which have at least one stable wage earner, typically seek CNY265,000 of credit. Their self-employed, freelance or farming counterparts demand CNY133,000, according to the survey.

Property purchases still make up the majority of debt in Chinese families, but the country's rapidly growing e-commerce sector has seen growth in demand for consumer credit begin to outstrip that of mortgages.

This could be the reason for the spurt in China's internet finance industry. A number of Chinese microloan lenders, several of which listed in the US this year, have come under scrutiny for exploiting borrowers, something which the government hopes to correct by rolling out new regulations. Three such firms now have a share price lower than their initial offering.

Working class households have an average of nearly CNY1.78 million in assets, including real estate, while other families have around CNY916,000, the survey shows. Property makes up 78.2 percent of all assets.

Data from 2015 to 2017 shows that the asset-liability ratio of working class households was more than 20 percent in Shanghai municipality and Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces. People born in or after the 1970s tend to take out more credit than older generations, and have higher debt ratios, especially those born in the 1980s.

The typical annual income of working class families in Northwest China is considerably lower than the national average. In Shaanxi province, these households earn less than CNY100,000 a year.