Field: Family Type

Description

Family Type, as reported by FRS respondents, where:

• a family is defined as a single adult or a married or cohabiting couple and any dependent children.
• an adult living in the same household as his or her parents, for example, is a separate family unit from the parents (see Type of Individual by Age Category for more information).
• a couple is defined as two adults, of same or different sex, who are married (spouse), or from January 2006 in a civil partnership (partner), or are assumed to be living together as such (cohabitee) (see Marital Status of Adults and Type of Couple in the Family of the Individual for more information).

Classification

Applicable to: All Individuals

• Pensioner couple: a couple where one or more of the adults are State Pension age or over.
• Single Pensioner: an adult of State Pension age or over:
• Single male pensioner: a single male adult of State Pension age or over.
• Single female pensioner: a single female adult of State Pension age or over.

• Couple with children: a non-pensioner couple with dependent children.
• Single with children: a non-pensioner single adult with dependent children.
• Couple without children: a non-pensioner couple with no dependent children.
• Single male without children: a non-pensioner single male adult with no dependent children.
• Single female without children: a non-pensioner single female adult with no dependent children.

Number of Main Pensioner or Working-age family categories: 2

Number of Pensioner Couple or Single or Working-age family categories: 4

Number of detailed family categories: 8

Quality Statement

Estimates of the number of lone parent families in the population are provided from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and directly used to weight the HBAI sample. Using this methodology we have recorded a 300,000 jump in the population of children in lone parent families between 2019/20 and 2021/22. Further data points are needed to assess the degree to which this reflects a genuine increase, is due to LFS sample variation, or is a consequence of recent changes to weighting introduced within the LFS. Our assessment is that this jump has had a negligible impact on low income rates.

Separate categories for single male with children and single female with children are not provided to maintain data confidentiality.

Further information can be found in the HBAI Quality and Methodology Report here.

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