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Scotland's People
Results from the 2003 Scottish Household Survey Annual Report

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 ( See Glossary for definitions).

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

Household size and type

The structure of households is illustrated in Figure 3-1 and Figure 3-2. Most households are small. Almost a third of households (32%) contain only one adult (single adult or single pensioner) and almost a third (32%) contain two adults (small adult and older smaller). Only 5% of households contain five or more people.

Figure 3-3 shows the number of children in households. Just over a quarter of households (26%) contain children with most of these containing one or two children.

Table 3.1 shows the sex of the Highest Income Householder (HIH) by household type. In the majority of households (61%), the HIH is male. Where the HIH is female, this tends to be in households with only one adult, where there is no male adult in the household (single adult, single parent and single pensioner households). In 91% of single parent households, the HIH is female.

Household composition

The sex and age of household members is shown in Table 3-3. There are more female than male household members: 53% compared with 47%. A fifth (20%) of household members are aged under 16 while 23% are aged 60 or over.

Of the households containing children, 53% are small families (two adults and one or two children) and 26% are large families (two adults and three or more children, or three or more adults and one or more children). Single parent families account for 22% of all households with children ( Table 3.4).

Looking at the characteristics of the adult population ( Table 3.6), 55% are women and 45% are men. Those aged 16 to 24 make up 11% of the adult population, while those aged 75 or over account for 9%. Over half (55%) are married and 7% are cohabiting.

Table 3.11 shows that 84% of those aged 16 to 24 are single compared with 32% of those aged 25 to 34 and 13% of those aged 35 to 44. Of those aged 25 to 34, 20% are cohabiting and 42% are married while, of those aged 35 to 44, 10% are cohabiting and 64% are married. Almost half (49%) of those aged 75 or over are widowed.

Almost half (48%) of adults in Single Parent households have never been married, 20% are divorced and 24% are separated ( Table 3.12).

Compared with other areas, one-person households are more common in large urban areas and remote small towns. Households with four or more members are more prevalent in accessible small towns and accessible rural areas ( Table 3.15).

Glasgow is the only local authority grouping where one-person households are more common than two-person households ( Table 3.16).

Table 3.1: Sex of Highest Income Householder by household type
Column percentages, 2003 data
Households

Table 3.2: Household type by age of Highest Income Householder
Column percentages, 2003 data
Households

Table 3.3: Characteristics of household members
Column percentages, 2003 data
All household members

Figure 3-3: Total number of children in household
2003 data
Households

Table 3.4: Household type by whether there are children in household
Column percentages, 2003 data
Households

Table 3.5: Ages of children in households by family type
Column percentages, 2003 data
Households with children

Table 3.6: The characteristics of adult population
Column percentages, 2003 data
Adult population

Table 3.7: Age and sex of adult population
Column percentage, 2003 data
Adult population

Table 3.8: Household type by sex of adult population
Column percentage, 2003 data
Adult population

Table 3.9: Marital status by sex of adult population
Column percentages, 2003 data
Adult population

Table 3.10: Household type by age of adult population
Column percentages, 2003 data
Adult population

Table 3.11: Age and marital status of adult population
Row and column percentages, 2003 data
Adult population

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