Scottish Household Survey Bulletin No.2

5. Households containing children

Number of children

Almost half of single parent (46%) and other families (45%) contain one child, while 35% of single parent families and 39% of other families contain two children. Only 15% of all family households contain three or more children (no table).

Household income and children

As Table 11 shows, few households with children (only 7%) have a household income of less than £6,000. Twenty nine per cent of households with children have a household income of over £20,000.

Over 30% of households containing one child have a household income of under £10,000, compared with 24% of households with more children.

Childcare

Twenty-eight per cent of households with children had had their children looked after by someone outside their household for five hours or more in the seven days prior to the survey (no table). For 67% of householders, this was to enable them to go out to work. It was to facilitate training or education for only 5% but was for 'some other reason' for 31% of respondents (no table).

Work-related childcare is most common for higher income households, with over 80% of households in this income band who use childcare doing so to allow them to go to work.

Almost 60% of childcare users did not pay anything for their childcare.

Incomes and mode of travel to school

Children are more likely to walk to school than use any other form of transport. However, the proportion walking to school tends to decline as household income increases (Table 12).

The proportion of children who travel to school as passengers in cars increases from 7% in the £6-10,000 household income band to 32% of those in households with incomes of over £20,000.

Note: Sample size reduced because of refusals and insufficient data on income questions