Data you need to know about China

Survey and research center for China household finance, a non-profit institution for academic inquiry and study, is founded by Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (SWUFE) and Institute of Finance Research of People s Bank of China. Its essential mission is to carry out China household finance survey in nationwide scope, collecting micro-level information about household finance, which includes housing assets and financial wealth, debts and credit constraints, incomings, expenditures, social security and insurance, intergenerational transfer payments, demographic characteristics and employments, habits of payments, etc, in order to offer high-quality micro data of household finance for academic study and policy making. This survey, held comprehensively and systematically by entering household questionnaire, is aiming at China household finance area. A basic database, related to micro area of China household finance, will be built based on the results of this survey, and shared all over the society. The center plans to carry out the entering household survey nationwide scope every two years. Those samples are distributed in 320 communities (urben and rural) in 80 counties (districts and cities) of 25 provinces (municipality), whose size is about more than 8400 families. The August of 2011 saw a great success of the first-round sampling and interviewing work, bringing back 8438 samples with a nonresponse rate of 12%, which in urben is 16.5%, while in rural is 3.2%. Its nonresponse rate is lower than that of congeneric surveys at home and abroad. This round of survey is achieved by high-quality groups made up of students in SWUFE, among whom the undergraduates and masters played roles of interviewers and samplers, while doctors took charge of field managers. The veracity of statistics is ensured by their professional quality and dedicated spirit. What is more, technologies such as Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) are used in the survey to reduce non-sampling errors. At present, work of data clearing is underway. A conference is planned to be held next year, on which the statistics will be proclaimed. At the same time, the center is developing Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CATI) system, which could help to announce statistics every season to expand influence of that about China household finance.