Database: Households on Universal Credit

Field: Number of Children

Description

Includes all children or young people declared as living in a household on Universal Credit who are under 20 and whose details have been verified by DWP.

Classification

Applicable to: All Households

The Number of Children field can take the following values:

Total number of categories: 7

Quality Statement

In a very small proportion of cases, information on children in the household is missing or unknown in the data available to statisticians for the reporting month in which the data is counted.

The number of children may not be equal to the number of dependent children in the household who are eligible for child element for various reasons. This includes children over the age of 16 in non-advanced full-time education, looked-after children and, other young people living in multigenerational households whose parents are not the claimant. Those affected by the policy to provide support for a maximum of two children may also have a larger number of children compared to the number of dependent children in their household.

It is currently not possible within the data available to statisticians to reliably identify if a declared child is a dependant or a child of the claimant.

Back to top