The management of China's hukou, or household registration, system has failed to keep pace with urbanization, a research institution has warned.

The warning was based on a recent survey finding that although more than 50 percent of China's population live in cities, only about a quarter of city dwellers have obtained hukou documents in cities, the institution said.

The report on the urbanization and movement of China's labor force, released by the China Data Center of Tsinghua University, showed that 27.7 percent of respondents said they had hukou in cities as of 2010, a rise of some 7.7 percentage points over the previous two decades.