Brief Introduction
I. Main Content
Data in this chapter show
the conditions of people’s livelihood in
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 Department of Urban
Socio-economic Surveys, 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 Department of Urban Socio-economic Surveys, NBS.
The survey organizations of the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities
directly under the central government as well as the 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 Department of Rural Socio-economic
Surveys, 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 Department of Rural
Socio-economic Surveys, NBS in selecting the rural sample households, with the
cycle of complete rotation being 5 years.