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Provision of unpaid care by households with people with a disability by economic activity status

Important information:

We did not ask people aged under five years whether they provided unpaid care, so this variable counts usual residents aged five years and over.

Read more about this quality notice.

Important information:

As Census 2021 was during a unique period of rapid change, take care when using this data for planning purposes.

Read more about this quality notice.

Summary

This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents in households in England and Wales who are aged 16 years and over by disability, provision of unpaid care, and by economic activity status. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.

Variable and dataset information

Area type

Census 2021 statistics are published for a number of different geographies. These can be large, for example the whole of England, or small, for example an output area (OA), the lowest level of geography for which statistics are produced.

For higher levels of geography, more detailed statistics can be produced. When a lower level of geography is used, such as output areas (which have a minimum of 100 persons), the statistics produced have less detail. This is to protect the confidentiality of people and ensure that individuals or their characteristics cannot be identified.

Lower tier local authorities

Lower tier local authorities provide a range of local services. There are 309 lower tier local authorities in England made up of 181 non-metropolitan districts, 59 unitary authorities, 36 metropolitan districts and 33 London boroughs (including City of London). In Wales there are 22 local authorities made up of 22 unitary authorities.

Coverage

Census 2021 statistics are published for the whole of England and Wales. However, you can choose to filter areas by:

  • country - for example, Wales
  • region - for example, London
  • local authority - for example, Cornwall
  • health area – for example, Clinical Commissioning Group
  • statistical area - for example, MSOA or LSOA

Unpaid care

An unpaid carer may look after, give help or support to anyone who has long-term physical or mental ill-health conditions, illness or problems related to old age.

This does not include any activities as part of paid employment.

This help can be within or outside of the carer's household.

Number of disabled people in household

The number of people in a household who assessed their day-to-day activities as limited by long-term physical or mental health conditions or illnesses and are considered disabled. This definition of a disabled person meets the harmonised standard for measuring disability and is in line with the Equality Act (2010).

Economic activity status

People aged 16 years and over are economically active if, between 15 March and 21 March 2021, they were:

* in employment (an employee or self-employed)

* unemployed, but looking for work and could start within two weeks

* unemployed, but waiting to start a job that had been offered and accepted

It is a measure of whether or not a person was an active participant in the labour market during this period. Economically inactive are those aged 16 years and over who did not have a job between 15 March to 21 March 2021 and had not looked for work between 22 February to 21 March 2021 or could not start work within two weeks.

The census definition differs from International Labour Organization definition used on the Labour Force Survey, so estimates are not directly comparable.

This classification splits out full-time students from those who are not full-time students when they are employed or unemployed. It is recommended to sum these together to look at all of those in employment or unemployed, or to use the four category labour market classification, if you want to look at all those with a particular labour market status.

Variables

Population type
All usual residents in households
Area type
Lower tier local authorities
Coverage
England and Wales
Economic activity status
4 Categories
  • Economically active: In employment (including full-time students)
  • Economically active: Unemployed (including full-time students)
  • Economically inactive
  • Does not apply
Number of disabled people in household
4 Categories
  • No people disabled under the Equality Act in household
  • 1 person disabled under the Equality Act in household
  • 2 or more people disabled under the Equality Act in household
  • Does not apply
Unpaid care
5 Categories
  • Provides no unpaid care
  • Provides 19 or less hours unpaid care a week
  • Provides 20 to 49 hours unpaid care a week
  • Provides 50 or more hours unpaid care a week
  • Does not apply

Get the data

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Contact us

Protecting personal data

Sometimes we need to make changes to data if it is possible to identify individuals. This is known as statistical disclosure control.

In Census 2021, we:

  • swapped records (targeted record swapping), for example, if a household was likely to be identified in datasets because it has unusual characteristics, we swapped the record with a similar one from a nearby small area (very unusual households could be swapped with one in a nearby local authority)
  • added small changes to some counts (cell key perturbation), for example, we might change a count of four to a three or a five – this might make small differences between tables depending on how the data are broken down when we applied perturbation

Read more in Section 5 of our article Design for Census 2021.

Version history

Release date Reason for update
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Version superseded
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