Definition: Standard classification of households and families

Category: Social statistics

It will often be useful and necessary to present a cross-classification of legal marital status and living arrangement. This will be applied when making typologies of households and families. The Census Recommendations presents some derived topics for this purpose. Once a household and a family are defined in the data, the re will be possible to derive a number of variables for each unit. For household, the Census mentions size of private household, number of economically active members, number of children under a specified age, number of members of retirement age, in addition to 'type of private household'. For the last variable the following harmonised classification is an example :
Type of private household:
 - 1. Non-family household
  - 1.1 one-person household
  - 1.2 multi-person household
 - 2. One-family household
  - 2.1 couple with no children (living in the household)
    - 2.11 married or registered 
    - 2.12 cohabitants
  - 2.2 couple with children (living the household) 
   - 2.21 married
   - 2.22 cohabitants
- 2.3 lone parent 
   - 2.31 lone mother
   - 2.32 lone father
 - 3. Two or more families household
  - 3.1 with children in the household
  - 3.2 without children in the household.