Household composition by Tenure by Occupancy rating of rooms (Local Authorities) 2011

Dataset population: Households

Household composition

Household composition classifies households according to the relationships between the household members. Households consisting of one family and no other usual residents are classified according to the type of family (married, same-sex civil partnership or cohabiting couple family, or lone parent family) and the number of dependent children. Other households are classified by the number of people, the number of dependent children, or whether the household consists only of students or only of people aged 65 and over.

In Northern Ireland only:

• A dependent child is a person in a household aged 0 to 15 (whether or not in a family) or a person aged 16 to 18 who is a full-time student in a family with parent(s).
• A family consists of a couple (married, same-sex civil partnership or cohabiting) with or without children, or a lone parent and their children. It also includes a married, same-sex civil partnership or cohabiting couple with their grandchildren or a lone grandparent with his or her grandchildren, if there is no parent in the intervening generation in the household. A family will also include step-children when their parent is part of the couple.

Tenure

Tenure provides information about whether a household rents or owns the accommodation that it occupies and, if rented, combines this with information about the type of landlord who owns or manages the accommodation.

Occupancy rating (rooms)

Occupancy rating provides a measure of whether a household's accommodation is overcrowded or underoccupied. There are two measures of occupancy rating:

1. Based on the number of rooms in a household's accommodation
2. Based on the number of bedrooms in a household's accommodation

The ages of the household members and their relationships to each other are used to derive the number of rooms/bedrooms they require, based on a standard formula. The number of rooms/bedrooms required is subtracted from the number of rooms/bedrooms in the household's accommodation to obtain the occupancy rating. An occupancy rating of -1 implies that a household has one fewer room/bedroom than required, whereas +1 implies that they have one more room/bedroom than the standard requirement.