Perfect Couple: Families

This bulletin presents annual statistics on the number of families by type, people in families by type and children in families by type. A family is a married, civil partnered or cohabiting couple with or without children, or a lone parent with at least one child who live at the same address. Children may be dependent or non-dependent. Types of family include married couple families, cohabiting couple families and lone parent families. The bulletin also presents statistics for 1996 to 2014 on the number of households by type, household size and people living alone. A household is one person living alone, or a group of people (not necessarily related) living at the same address who share cooking facilities and share a living room, sitting room or dining area. A household can consist of more than one family, or no families in the case of a group of unrelated people.

The Marriages (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 made provision for the marriage of same sex couples in England and Wales from 29th March 2014 onwards. No married same sex couples were selected in the interview sample in the April to June 2014 quarter of the Labour Force Survey (LFS). Therefore statistics on same sex married couples, their families and their households will not be reported on within this bulletin. Early analysis of the July to September 2014 quarter shows that some married same sex couples were interviewed on the LFS.

Author:  Labour Force Survey - Office for National Statistics

Figure 1 shows that the most common family type in the UK in 2014 was a married or civil partner couple family without dependent children. There were 7.8 million such families in 2014. The next most common family type was a married or civil partner couple family with dependent children, of which there were 4.8 million in 2014. All family types have increased in number since 2004 but the fastest growing family type in the UK over the decade 2004 to 2014 was the cohabiting couple family (including both with and without dependent children). The number of cohabiting couple families grew by 29.7% between 2004 and 2014. This compares to a growth of 11.9% for lone parent families and 2.2% growth for married couple families. Despite an increase in all three types of family over the last decade, married couple families are still the most common family type in the UK, both with and without dependent children.

Source:

- National Statistics (2015). Families and Households, 2014. Statistical Bulletin. UK. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_393133.pdf