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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. 9
Please refer to Chapter 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 a third (33%) contain two adults. Only 5% of households contain five or more people.
Figure 3.3 shows the number of children in households. Around 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 (59%), 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 90% of single parent households, the HIH is female.
Household composition
Of the households containing children, 52% 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).
The sex and age of household members is shown in Table 3.3. There are more female than male household members: 52% compared with 48%. Almost a fifth (19%) of household members are aged under 16 while 23% are aged 60 or over.
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 10%. Over half (53%) are married and 9% are cohabiting.
Table 3.11 shows that 83% of those aged 16 to 24 are single compared with 35% of those aged 25 to 34 and 15% of those aged 35 to 44. Of those aged 25 to 34, 23% are cohabiting and 38% are married while, of those aged 35 to 44, 13% are cohabiting and 61% are married. Almost half (49%) of those aged 75 or over are widowed.
Just over half (51%) of adults in Single Parent households have never been married, 18% are divorced and 21% are separated ( Table 3.12).
Compared with other areas, one-person households are more common in large urban areas. Households with four or more members are less prevalent in these areas ( Table 3.15).
One-person households are more common than two-person households in Edinburgh (40%; 35%) and Glasgow (41%; 30%). ( Table 3.16).
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