On the trail of China's phantom farmers

Many studies of China's economy use standard yearbook data for China's farm labor force. These data massively overestimate the number of Chinese farm workers. Our calculations show that the number of "phantom farmers" actually working outside agriculture may easily surpass 100 million. This paper reveals the implausible implications of the standard data, uses information from cost surveys to derive new estimates of China's farm work force, and investigates the implications of the new, lower series for agricultural employment on the measurement and interpretation of recent Chinese growth. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.