On the basis of rural household survey in 12 provinces of China in 2005, this research built an econometrical model to find the area standard for rural housing land. This standard is expected to facilitate rural housing land administration, efficient and intensive housing land use and policy making. This research concludes: 1) according to the household survey data, the average area for rural housing land in China is about 235.26 m(2), and the rural housing land mainly includes unused land (42.89%) and house construction land (37.76%) with the average floor-area ratio of 0.42; 2) the indexes in the standard concern the factors such as location, landform, house form, household population and cultivated land area per farmer, which all have significant effects on rural housing land use; 3) the reasonable area for rural housing land may be 150 m(2) in average before 2020, and the referential standards in different provinces are 120 m(2), 130 m(2), 140m(2), 150 m(2), 160 m(2), 170 m(2), 190 m(2), 200 m(2), 210 m(2), 220 m(2), 230 m(2) and 250 m(2) respectively; and 4) if there are less than two persons or more than five persons in a family, these standards need to be decreased or increased by 7%. When the cultivated land area per farmer is lower than the provincial average, the standards have to reduce by 3.5%.