The Scottish Government

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Scotland's People Volume 7: results from the 2001/2002 Scottish Household Survey

3. Who we are

Introduction

This chapter provides information on the main characteristics of the Scottish population and Scottish households. The SHS collects information on a number of levels: for the household as a whole, about individual household members and for the Scottish population resident in private households. Data about the household, including information about the age, sex and working status of all household members is collected from the household respondent. Data designed to be representative of the Scottish adult population is collected from an adult selected randomly from all eligible adults within the household. 8

Please refer to Section 2 for more information about interpreting the information in the tables in this section.

Household size and type

Figure 3-1 and Figure 3-2 show the structure of households in Scotland. Two-thirds of households (66%) contain only one or two people. Single person households (single adults and single pensioners) account for just over 30% of the total, while households containing five or more people make up only 6% of all households. The average (mean) number of people in Scottish households is 2.3.

Just over a quarter of households contain children (aged under 16 years), with 6% of households being single parents, 14% small families and 7% large families.1

The majority of Highest Income Householders (62%) are male, as shown in Table 3-1. Households with a female HIH are generally single parents, non-pensioner females living alone or single pensioners. The largest proportion of female HIHs are in older households, with 39% being pensioners compared with 24% of male HIHs. Households where the HIH is male are generally couple or family households with two or more adults and children.

Household composition

Over half of households with children are small families - two adults and one or two children. Over one fifth are single parent households ( Table 3-4).

Table 3-3 shows that there are more female than male household members, at 52% and 48% respectively. Children aged under 16 make up 21% of all household members while 17% of all household members are aged 65 years or older.

Among the adult population in private households, women make up 56% of the population ( Table 3-6). Over 50% of adults are married and 7% are cohabiting with a partner. Women are substantially more likely than men to be widowed (13% and 5% respectively) ( Table 3-9). In the 25-34 age group, 20% of adults are cohabiting and 43% are married ( Table 3-11).

Table 3-10 shows that 38% of adults aged 16-24 years living in private households are in Large Adult households with three or more adults and no children, and 21% are in Large Family households.

Table 3-12 shows that 30% of cohabiting adults are in Small Family households and 9% are in Large Family households. It also shows that almost half (49%) of Single Parent households have never been married and that 21% are divorced and 23% separated.

The cities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow have higher proportions of Single Adult households, with 22%, 23% and 23% respectively. Eilean Siar has the highest proportion of Single Pensioner households at 20% ( Table 3-13).

In general, the large urban areas have higher proportions of one-adult households whereas larger households are more prevalent in small towns and accessible rural areas ( Table 3-14, Table 3-15).

The large urban areas also have the lowest proportion of households with children (25%) compared with 30% in accessible rural areas ( Table 3-18).

Figure 3-1: Household type 8 2001/2002 data Households	Figure 3-2: Number of people in the household 2001/2002 data Households

Table 3-1: Sex of Highest Income Householder by household type

Column percentages, 2001/2002 data
Households

Table 3-2: Household type by age of Highest Income Householder

Column percentages, 2001/2002 data
Households

Table 3-3: Characteristics of household members

Column percentages, 2001/2002 data
All household members (The figures presented on ethnicity are not comparable with the 2001 Census. Please see the technical report for details.)

Figure 3-3: Total number of children in household

Households, 2001/2002 data

Table 3-4: Household type by whether there are children in household

Column percentages, 2001/2002 data
Households

Table 3-5: The ages of children in households by family type
Column percentages, 2001/2002 data
Households with children

Columns add to more than 100% since multiple responses were possible

Table 3-6: The characteristics of adult population

Column percentages, 2001/2002 data
Adult population

The figures presented on ethnicity are not comparable with the 2001 Census. Please see the technical report for details.

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