California Center for Population Research

No official public use micro-sample of the 1990 Chinese census has yet been released. There are, however, two extant micro-samples of the census that have circulated within China and abroad. The first, in order of creation, is a one percent sample of administrative villages. The second is a one percent sample of households. We refer to the former, the subject of this article, as the "one percent clustered sample," and refer to the latter as the "one percent household sample." The State Statistical Bureau of China has provided the one percent household sample to several researchers, but to our knowledge has never released the corresponding mortality data. Provision of the one percent clustered sample has been on an informal basis, generally without mortality data. We obtained the clustered sample and the corresponding mortality data separately, from sources that prefer to remain anonymous.