Adults and children in household and ethnic group
We have made methodological adjustments to the data for children aged 0 to 2 years. This is because people often forget to add their babies to their Census return. In some places the data shows a higher-than-expected number of child-only households.
Read more about this quality notice.
Summary
This dataset provides 2021 Census estimates that classify all household reference persons in England and Wales by adults and children in household and ethnic group. 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.
England and Wales
Data for both England and Wales.
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
Adults and children in household
Classifies households by the age of the people in them. In this classification, an “adult” is any person aged 16 years and over and a “child” is any person aged under 16 years. It does not take into account the relationships between people in households.
Ethnic group
The ethnic group that the person completing the census feels they belong to. This could be based on their culture, family background, identity or physical appearance.
Respondents could choose one out of 19 tick-box response categories, including write-in response options.
Variables
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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
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Dataset link
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