All this means that the homes can be built very quickly and with unskilled labour.
It was not so much a fear of crime, nor even the country's inflexible and unskilled labour market.
Poorer countries tend to have relatively more unskilled labour, so they tend to export simple manufactures, such as clothing.
Local firms, such as Bharat Forge, have been shedding unskilled labour, investing in technology and building brands and distribution overseas.
To put it even more crudely, where there is a huge over-supply of unskilled labour, the dead can easily be replaced.
Sir Samuel argues that there may be more to the argument that globalisation is driving down the relative wages of unskilled labour.
He said importing unskilled labour had "caused enough problems when there was an economic boom on" and would be completely "wrong-headed" in tougher times.
Its businesses were herded into heavy industry, chemicals and engineering, leaving the economy reliant on capital and credentials, rather than the unskilled labour it has in abundance.
Foreign manufacturers have piled into the country in the hope of tapping its potentially huge consumer market, as well as its mix of cheap skilled and unskilled labour.
Part of the answer is that the proportion of working-age men actually in work is lower than it was ten or 20 years ago, thanks to a drop in the demand for unskilled labour.
"The market for relatively unskilled labour in China has been tightening, and now there is even more incentive for companies to relax their standards, so they try and fill up their work spaces, " he said.
Unskilled-labour costs have been reduced (though by not nearly enough) by cutting employers' welfare charges for the lowest paid.
New Zealand began a guest-worker scheme last year, but John Howard, Australia's prime minister at the time, flatly rejected opening the doors to unskilled Pacific labour.
But Labour also hinted that unskilled workers would no longer be able to work their way towards citizenship.
The study from the Institute of Education shows a major shift since the 1980s, with shrinking numbers of unskilled jobs and now more than a quarter of the labour market being taken by graduate jobs.
Its economic model, based on undercutting European labour costs, means that many of the jobs on offer are unskilled and unrewarding.
Third, the demand for labour has fallen since the mid-1980s as technological change reduced the need for unskilled workers and as companies have restructured.
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