Using Administrative Data to Count and Classify Households with Local Applications

• Published in: Applied spatial analysis and policy Vol. 9; no. 4; pp. 433 - 462
• Main Authors: Harper, Gillian, Mayhew, Les
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01-12-2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Classification; Data; Data collection; Households; Human Geography; Landscape/Regional and Urban Planning; Local population; Public policy; Regional/Spatial Science; Social Sciences; Statistics; Administrative data; Local applications; Household classification; Household statistics
• ISSN: 1874-463X; 1874-4621
• DOI: 10.1007/s12061-015-9162-2

Households rather than individuals are being increasingly used for research and to target and evaluate public policy. As a result accurate and timely household level statistics have become an increasing necessity especially at local level. However, official sources of information on households are fragmented with significant gaps and inaccuracies that limit their usefulness. This paper reviews present statistical arrangements and then describes a new approach to data collection and household classification which combine various local administrative sources. An intermediate step is the creation of local population counts which are converted into household types and these methods are described in two companion papers previously published in this journal. The utility and advantages of the approach are demonstrated using the example of the six Olympic London Boroughs for whom the data collection was undertaken in 2011 and the analysis subsequently.