The modest objective of this chapter is to provide Scottish–English comparisons of aspects of household and family structure that are not readily available from other data sources, such as the census or General Household Survey. These include the proportion of young people living with their parents or the proportion living in a cohabiting union. It also aims to exploit the panel nature of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to compare age patterns of people's household context taking into account unobserved person-specific influences on individual living arrangement decisions, and to compare key transition rates such as departure from the parental home. The comparison finds that independent living is much more common in Scotland than England, particularly among young people, but also among older people.

It is well known that birth rates are lower in Scotland than in England, and this has been the case for the past 20 years. For instance, in 2000 the total fertility rate in Scotland was 1.47 children per woman compared with 1.66 in England. Births outside marriage have increased rapidly in both countries, but in the past five years the percentage of births outside marriage has increased faster in Scotland than in England. By 2000, 43% of Scottish births were outside marriage compared with 39% of English births. Also, Scotland has persistently had higher death rates. At 1999 age-specific mortality rates, the expectation of life at birth for women (men) is 78.2 (72.8) in Scotland, compared with 80.2 (75.4) in England. Differences in these vital rates are likely to contribute to differences in household and family structure. We first compare aspects of household structure between England and Scotland using data from 1999 and 2000, appropriately weighted to represent nationally representative samples from each country. The weights, available in the BHPS user database, reflect sampling design and non-response. For many of the aspects of people's household context, the weighting is very important.

Overview

Table 4.1 shows the distribution of adults in 1999-2000 according to the type of household in which they live. Scotland has a larger percentage of households containing a couple with dependent children than England, but relatively fewer couple households with nondependent children.