Brief Introduction

I. Main Content

Data in this chapter show the conditions of people’s livelihood in China, consisting of two parts on the life of urban and rural households respectively.

II. Source of Data on the Livelihood of Urban Residents

Data on the livelihood of the urban residents in this chapter come from the data collected through samples survey on the urban households conducted by the Urban Socio-economic Survey Organization, NBS. The main content of the survey includes the population in the household and its composition, the cash income and expenditure of the household, the quantity of, and the expenditure on major commodities purchased, the employment of the household members, the housing condition and the possession of the durable consumer goods.

III. Methodology for Urban Household Survey

The survey on the urban households is organized by the Urban Socio-economic Survey Organization, NBS. The urban socio-economic survey organizations of the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government as well as the urban socio-economic survey organizations of the selected cities and counties collect the data in accordance with the survey scheme stipulated by NBS and report them to the higher organization.

Until 2001, the survey covered only non-agricultural households. Starting from 2002, it covers all households in urban areas and county towns.

The survey on the urban households is conducted in such a way that households selected by sampling method keep accounts for successive three years and be interviewed by the enumerators. By a rotation sampling scheme, one third of the old sample households should be replaced by the new sample households every year. The respondent households are selected by the two-stage stratified systematic random sampling scheme.

At the first stage, the cities and counties are firstly classified into 5 categories by their population size, namely the particularly large cities, large cities, medium-sized cities, small cities and counties. Secondly, they are grouped into the 6 administrative regions (northeastern region, north region, eastern region, central region, northwestern region and southwestern region). In each administrative region, the cities and counties are arranged in the order of the average wages of their staff and workers in the urban areas. Thirdly, the number of the staff and workers of the cities are accumulated and the sample cities or counties are selected by a systematic sampling scheme; the sampling interval is one million staff and workers.

At the second stage, the sample households are selected by the multi-stage and two-phase sampling scheme. In the particularly large and large cities, the first phase sample is selected by three-stage sampling method: Firstly, the sample sub-districts are selected; Secondly, the sample residents committees are selected from the sample sub-districts; Thirdly, the sample households are selected from the sample residents committees. In the medium-sized and small cities and counties, the first phase sample is selected by two-stage sampling method: Firstly, the sample residents committees are directly selected; Secondly, the sample households are selected from the sample residents committees. The second phase sample is composed of the sample households which are surveyed in a regular way and these households are selected with stratified sampling method from the households in the first phase sample.

In total, 25,000 households in 226 cities and counties are selected by the National Bureau of Statistics in the above-mentioned approach. Additional local samples are selected by local statistical offices by the same sample design, making the total sample size to reach over 50,000 households.

IV. Source of Data on the Livelihood of Rural Residents

Data on the livelihood of the rural residents come from data collected through the sample survey on the rural households, which is organized by the Rural Socio-economic Survey Organization, NBS. The main content of the survey includes the basic condition of the rural households, consumption expenditure, consumption of major consumer goods and the quantity of durable consumer goods owned.

V. Methodology for Rural Household Survey

Sample survey on the rural households is conducted by first selecting sample villages and then selecting households in the selected villages in each province, with all rural households in the province as the population. A combination of various sampling approaches are used to identify a total of 68,000 households selected from 7,100 villages throughout the whole country.

It is required that the sampling error should not exceed to ±3%, with confidence of probability as 95%. In order to ensure the accuracy of the data of the survey on the rural households, two accounts are designed for the respondent households by the Rural Socio-economic Survey Organization, NBS, the cash account and the account on goods in kind. Nearly 10 thousand assistant enumerators have been invited to help the households to keep good accounts and check and tabulate the data of the survey.

In order to overcome the boring feeling of the respondent households and solve the problem of aging samples to make the sample more representative of the population and able to reflect the rural social and economic situation more accurately and timely, a rotation sampling scheme is implemented by the Rural Socio-economic Survey Organization, NBS in selecting the rural sample households, with the cycle of complete rotation being 5 years.