Dataset: Housing Benefit claimants
Field: Gender of claimant (single claimants only)
Description
As Housing Benefit can be claimed by a household as well as an individual it is not possible to assign only one gender to a household. Therefore, gender refers to the gender of single claimants only.
Gender is not specifically asked for on the Housing Benefit claim form. Information is collated by the local authority based on titles provided on the form (for example Mr, Mrs) and claimant proof of identity (see Images of Questions below).
Partner status is recorded as part of the housing benefit claim process (see Images of Questions below). Definitions of partner are also shown in the Images of Questions below. Information refers to the reference date (second Thursday in the month).
Images of Questions
Classification
For Housing Benefit data, gender is Applicable to: All single claimants
- Single - Male
- Single - Female
- Couple - not applicable
99 Unknown / Missing
Total number of categories: 4
Quality Statement
In support of the claim, proof of identity must be provided for the both the claimant and partner, for example, birth certificate.
It is possible that errors can occur in the recording of gender (both on the form and inputting onto the computer system within the local authority processing the claim).
A recording error within software used by a large number of local authorities resulted in a significant number of claimants having gender coded as unknown/missing for the period November 2008 to February 2010, therefore care should be taken when using gender breakdown for these months.
A small number of local authorities applied a fix to gender which is reflected in the data from November 2010. Prior to this, if the existing claimant changed to a different household member within the same benefit unit, gender was not amended accordingly. For example this could happen if:
- the claimant and partner swapped
- the claimant and partner separated
- the claimant died and another household member became the claimant.