Updated 28 September 2012
Proportion of Children living in workless households technical description
| Technical definition | The number of children living in workless households as a proportion of all children
A workless household is a household that includes at least one person aged 16 to 64; where no-one aged 16 or over is in employment. ‘Children’ refers to all children under 16. Data are not seasonally adjusted and therefore only year on year comparisons are meaningful |
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| Rationale | DWP's vision is to promote high levels of employment by helping those currently out of work into employment. The structural reform priority to help tackle the causes of poverty and improve social justice (SRP 3) recognises that work is the best route out of poverty. This indicator aligns with both of these objectives. |
| Formula | Number of children living in workless households / number of children living in all households = proportion of children living in workless households
Worked Example: |
| Start date | Already published in public domain. There is a time series of data from 1996 for Quarter 2 data and from 2004 for Quarter 4 data.
Data published around every 6 months for Quarter 2 (April-June) and Quarter 4 (October-December). |
| Good performance |
An improvement would be indicated by a statistically significant fall in the indicator. The magnitude of the fall required for a statistically significant change depends on the sampling variability around both the current and previous data points, for example for there to have been a statistically significant fall between April-June 2011 and April-June 2012 the proportion of children living in workless households would have had to have fallen by more than 1.0 percentage points. As the Labour Force Survey is a sample survey, it is subject to a margin of uncertainty, as different samples give different results. Therefore small changes over time in estimated indicators may not be statistically significant (ie they may have arisen from the different samples by chance). The threshold of a year-on-year change greater than 1.0 percentage points for a change between 2011 and 2012 is based on the confidence interval of the change rather than the single estimate. Significant changes in the indicator may be observed more easily over a longer time period. For example, two consecutive year-on-year changes, neither of which are statistically significant, may combine to show a significant change over the two-year period. Similarly, looking at a series of estimates over time will aid interpretation of trends. The proportion of children living in workless households is made up of the number of children living in workless households and the total number of children (as shown above), so changes to either of these figures affects the indicator. It is therefore important to look at why there has been a change to the indicator: Is there a change in the number of children living in workless households or a change in the total number of children (or both)? For example, it would be possible for there to be a fall in the proportion of children living in workless households at the same time as an increase in the number of children living in workless households, if the total number of children rose at a greater rate than the number of children living in workless households. In addition, external factors impacting on the prevalence of parental worklessness, for example general economic conditions, will affect this indicator but are outside of the Department’s control. |
| Behavioural impact | Monitoring children in workless households may result in a focus on only whether their parents are working or workless, with little attention on other factors such as their earnings levels or the quality of their employment. |
| Comparability | Eurostat (the EU statistics Agency) publishes data on the proportion of children living in jobless households for many EU countries (including the UK). The data is not directly comparable with the Office for National Statistics published figures as it uses a different age definition for children (defined as aged 0-17) and adults (aged 18-59). |
| Collection frequency | Published around every 6 months for Quarter 2 (April-June) and Quarter 4 (October-December).
April-June and October-December figures are not directly comparable as the data are not seasonally adjusted, only year on year comparisons are meaningful. |
| Time lag | Generally around 3 months after end of reference quarter |
| Data source (which data collection it comes from) | Household Labour Force survey (HLFS) |
| Type of data (Whether it is an official statistic, national statistic, survey, MI ) | National Statistics |
| Robustness and data limitations | As the HLFS is a sample survey, it is subject to a margin of uncertainty as different samples give different results – for example the confidence interval around estimates for April-June 2012 is ±0.7%pts:
Households by combined economic activity status of household members (666KB) The survey data is based on a sample of around 45,000 households. However, only about a third of these household contain children, so small sample sizes can limit analysts’ ability to identify statistically significant trends. Data are National Statistics produced to high professional standards. The quality of National Statistics products is assessed on a regular basis by the independent UK Statistics Authority. DWP is involved in the quality assurance process for the HLFS by assessing results for plausibility. Along with other users, DWP are represented on groups that monitor the quality and relevance of the underlying data (Labour Force Survey Steering Group) and the related National Statistics outputs (Labour Market Statistics Theme Group) and are able to feed in any concerns about the data collection process. |
| Collecting organisation | Office for National Statistics (ONS) |
| Return format | Unit and format of measurement is: Percentage terms |
| Geographical coverage | National – UK Great Britain England (including regional breakdown) Scotland Wales Northern Ireland |
| How indicator can be broken down | The headline data can be broken down by whether all members of the household are unemployed, all are inactive, or a combination of the two. The data can be compared with households where all members are working, and with households containing both working and workless members.
The headline data can also be broken down by:
These further breakdowns are published by ONS and are in the public domain. |
| Further guidance | Published in Excel and PDF format |
