Two key groups of characteristics go a considerable way to explaining the broad pattern of behaviour of households and the people within them:
i The ‘life-stage’ of a household – i.e. the age range of its member and their family structure (single, couple, with or without children etc)
ii Income, resources and social status (social grade, occupation, employment, size and type of house, number of cars etc) ,
Households with high income spend less on ‘essentials’ like food, than do low income households. Households with children have markedly different spending patterns from households above working age. But even within the same income and life-stage bracket, in a country of over 60 million there is huge variation in what people actually do with their time and money.
The census, despite its rather limited range of questions – listed in the table below, does provide a rich and consistent set of indicators of the lifestyle of households ‘on census night’ for the whole UK, down through successively smaller geographies – regions, local authority areas down to the smallest ‘output areas’ – averaging some 125 households, around 300 people or some 5 or 6 postcodes. Census data can be supplemented by data from household surveys, credit card databanks etc
The table of census questions is the key to understanding what kind of demographic tables and profiles can be generated for an area. The are 14 questions about the whole household and 46 questions about individuals in the household.
A host of tables can be produced, including cross classifications such as ‘house tenure by number of cars by social grade’ i.e. cross- classifying – household questions H12 by H13 by H14 , and these can be aggregated for urban regions, shopping catchment areas etc.