Many parents in China’s rural communities have migrated to the cities to find work, leaving their children behind. The Chinese government will be conducting its first comprehensive survey on left-behind rural children, says this article from the New York Times. A law professor at Beijing Normal University estimates there are approximately 100 million children whose parents have migrated to the cities for work, 60 million of whom have been left behind in rural communities. The survey will seek to determine how many children have been left behind, their geographical distribution, their family circumstance and their educational status. The survey will be conducted by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, in collaboration with Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Public Security, and other government agencies.