The China Family Panel Studies (中国家庭追踪调查) is a long-running household panel study — one of the few Chinese surveys that follows the same families year after year. Run by Peking University’s Institute of Social Science Survey, it tracks income, assets, health, education, migration, and attitudes for tens of thousands of people across most of mainland China, from a nationally representative baseline fielded in 2010 through the latest released wave, 2022.
If you want to know how inequality, aging, or migration have actually moved at the household level over the past decade-plus — rather than what official aggregates report — CFPS is one of the principal sources researchers turn to.
Basic facts
- Producer: Institute of Social Science Survey (ISSS), Peking University (北京大学中国社会科学调查中心)
- Principal investigators: Xie Yu (Peking University / Princeton), Zhang Xiaobo, Tu Ping, Ren Qiang (per secondary sources)
- Coverage period: 2010–present (biennial; baseline fielded 1 April–15 September 2010; subsequent rounds roughly every two years)
- Latest released wave: 2022 (published by ISSS in 2024). Full-sample follow-up waves: 2010 (baseline), 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022. As of September 2026, no public release has been confirmed for a 2024 wave — its fieldwork or release status is unknown.
- Geographic coverage: 25 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions of mainland China — about 95% of the population. The frame excludes Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, and Hainan (as well as Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan).
- Population/sample/unit: three tiers — individual, household, and community/village. Baseline: roughly 14,960 households and 42,590 individuals in 2010. Follow-up rounds cover roughly 40,000–50,000 people. All baseline family members plus their future blood or adopted children are permanent follow-up targets (a “genetic” panel).
- Update frequency: biennial (every two years).
What’s inside
CFPS measures household income (wage, business, transfer, property), expenditure and consumption, assets (real estate, financial, liabilities), demographics, education, employment, health (self-rated health, BMI, chronic disease), cognitive ability (vocabulary, math, memory tests), child development (ages 0–15), parenting, subjective attitudes (happiness, trust), intergenerational transfers, community infrastructure and public services, migration, pensions, insurance, and land.
How it was collected
Face-to-face interviews with computer-assisted interviewing (CAPI), in four core questionnaire types (community, family, adult, child) plus long/short, proxy, and phone variants. Technical support came from the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center. Funding: National Natural Science Foundation of China and Peking University (secondary sources).
Getting the data
- Access point: the official CFPS portal, http://www.isss.pku.edu.cn/cfps/ — data applications go through ISSS. Link: http://www.isss.pku.edu.cn/cfps/
- Access terms: registration/application-based for most waves (not an open download). The 2010 baseline is also mirrored on the Peking University Open Research Data Dataverse (DOI 10.18170/DVN/45LCSO). The data are not redistributed by ICPSR or other third-party archives (secondary sources).
- Citation: cite ISSS/CFPS per their data-use agreement; baseline Dataverse DOI 10.18170/DVN/45LCSO.
What it’s good for
Household-level research on income distribution and inequality (including longitudinal urban–rural and migrant gaps), demographic change and aging, education outcomes and social mobility, migration and left-behind children, and health policy. CFPS panel data have been used in academic analyses of China’s household trends (for example, an IMF working paper using the 2012–2022 household panel). It is the micro-level evidence base for reporting on inequality, demography, and education mobility — cross-referenced against official NBS statistics rather than replacing them.
Limitations — read before using
- Six provincial regions are excluded from the sampling frame. Estimates do not generalize to “all of China,” and CFPS cannot yield reliable figures for the excluded regions or small local areas.
- It is a household survey, not a census — and it measures household/individual outcomes, not policy or institutional variables. It does not directly measure things like local government budgets or firm behavior.
- Wave attrition accumulates over a 12+ year panel; the panel is unbalanced, which affects some analyses.
- Self-reported income, consumption, and attitudes are subject to recall and social-desirability bias. Wealth components are measured with less granularity than in specialized finance surveys (e.g., the China Household Finance Survey).
- Currency lag: the newest released wave is 2022, so current-year analysis runs several years behind fieldwork. The 2020 wave was fielded during COVID-19 (July–December 2020), which may introduce mode or selection effects.
- Sensitive attitude questions may undercount dissent in a survey context — a design caution, not a statement about any specific figure.
- Deceased persons’ information after death is captured only via proxy reports, and the biennial gap limits detection of short-run events.
Known revisions
- A 2024 wave’s fieldwork or release status has not been confirmed (as of September 2026).
- The 2020 and 2022 waves were published by ISSS in 2023 and 2024 respectively, per secondary sources; a 2026 peer-reviewed paper confirms publicly available data extend through 2022.
- Chinese title: the current official form is 中国家庭追踪调查; the earlier form 中国家庭动态跟踪调查 appears in older technical reports and is now superseded.
Authoritative documentation
- Official CFPS portal (ISSS, Peking University): http://www.isss.pku.edu.cn/cfps/ — link this URL
- CFPS technical-report series (ISSS; identity, design, and title history)
- Peking University Open Research Data Dataverse — baseline release, DOI 10.18170/DVN/45LCSO