UK statistics define households by shared meals or space
A household is one or more people sharing a dwelling—the basic unit for many social and economic surveys. Models range from families and blended homes to boarding houses and single-room occupancy. UK stats count people whose main residence is shared and who share a daily meal or living space.
Britain's Housing Act of 2004, aimed at regulating houses in multiple occupation, forced a tighter legal test: members count as one household if related by blood, fostering, step-ties or marriage, or if they live together as a couple of any sex. The US Census instead asks whether quarters are separate, meaning occupants live and eat apart from others in the building and can reach their rooms from outside or a shared hall; people who fail that test live in group quarters. In 1980 the census dropped head of household in favour of householder, the person in whose name the home is owned or rented.
Economic models often assume a single earner, but many households have several, and most models do not treat a household as identical to a traditional family. In social work, a household is the group that divides the housework and may care for one another, and its make-up can decide eligibility for welfare benefits. Ray Pahl coined household work strategy in 1984 for how members split labour, which shifts with age and economic conditions. Arlie Russell Hochschild found that in two-career couples men and women work about equal hours overall, yet women do more of the housework.
Housing standards varied sharply in the 1970s. In 1975 about 65 percent of Japanese homes lacked a flush toilet, against about 1 percent in the Netherlands and Denmark, and over half of Spanish homes had no fixed bath or shower. France transformed quickly: between 1954 and 1973 homes with a bath or shower rose from 10 to 65 percent, and the share lacking piped water shrank from about two in five to under 4 percent.
By 1974 about 78 percent of the French lived in flats, while half of Danes lived in detached houses.
Source: Household
