Family Variables

The relationship grid on the Household Form collects the relationship of everyone in the household to everyone else. This information is then used to assign people to family groups, identify what relationship they hold within the family, identify what type of family they belong to, and then identify what type of household they belong to.

The core relationships needed to make a family are a couple relationship or a parent-child relationship. There are several key points to note about how the families are defined:

• A couple relationship takes precedence over a parent-child relationship (see Figure 15). In a household with mum, dad, son and son’s defacto, the son’s couple relationship takes precedence over his child-parent relationship. This household would be a multi-family household, with mum and dad as a couple in one family and the son and his defacto in another family.
• The most recent generation has precedence over an older generation and the older generation is then considered an other relative. Figure 16 illustrates this case. The core household is defined by the mum - daughter generation (Before Child). However, when the daughter has a daughter herself, that younger generation then takes precedence and forms the core household (After Child) and the first mother is considered to be a relative (a grandmother).
• Children aged under 15 living in a household without natural, adopted, step or foster parents are attached to their closest relative. If they are without relatives, then they are attached to the person thought most likely to form a parent-child relationship with that child.

Figure 15: Family where new defacto relationship is formed

Figure 16: Family where new child is born

For the family variables, children are defined as natural, adopted, step or foster children. Children are split into three classifications: children under 15, dependent students (who are aged 15-24, not employed full-time, are studying full-time, are living with at least one parent, and are without a partner or child of their own); and non-dependent children.³

The family and household labels used identify the most dependent type of children in the family without identifying the other types of children in the family. Figure 17 illustrates a family with a couple, one child under 15 and two non-dependent children. The family type would be classified as a ‘Couple with a child < 15 without others' and the household type would be classified as a 'Couple with a child without others ’. 'Others Related' or 'Others Unrelated' refer to those outside of the core family unit (such as aunts, uncles, grandparents).

Figure 17: Family with child under 15 and non-dependent children

The income units are derived from the family units and separate out the non-dependant children and other relatives from rest of the family. The previous scenario in Figure 17 is, therefore, broken into 3 income units. Figure 18 shows how this is done. The first income unit (1) includes mum, dad and the child under 15. Each non-dependent child forms their own income unit (Income units 2 and 3).

Figure 18: Income units in a family with child under 15 and non-dependent children

Along with the variables based on the relationship grid, a number of other variables are listed in Table 22, including identifiers for various people in the household and counts of the number of people in certain age groups. The partner, father and mother identifiers were discussed in a preceding section on identifiers.

Table 22: Derived family variables