Rural Panel Surveys in Developing Countries: A Selective Review

Rural panel surveys are the most appropriate means to provide data for studying the unprecedented rapid migration and urbanization currently taking place in China and other developing countries. To maximize heterogeneity in urbanization and development over the last three decades, we selected rural panel surveys from five Asian countries, including India, Indonesia, Nepal, Thailand, and China. This paper provides a selective review, focusing on their panel survey methodology, which is organized based on our proposed four basics of panel surveys - representativeness, retrospect-prospect, multilevel tracking, and temporality. We analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of the selected panel surveys to provide directions for designing future rural panel studies in China and elsewhere in the developing world.