Why It Matters Living Arrangements and Marital Status
Summary
We have reccorded the domestic living arrangements and maritial status of residents in your neighbourhood.
Interpretation
| Dataset | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Total number of adults aged 16 or over in a postcode (metric population) | This tells you the total number of adults aged 16 and over living in your postcode |
| Z score: Residents Living in a couple | This tells how many standard deviations above or bellow the mean your postcode is regarding the percentage of “households” that are comprised of people living together as partners regardless of sexuality or marital status. |
| Percentage of Residents Living in a couple: Married | This tells you the percentage of all the “households” in your postcode that are comprised of married people living together |
| Percentage of Residents Living in a couple: Cohabiting (opposite-sex) | This tells you the percentage of all the “households” in your postcode that are comprised of two people of opposite sexes living together as a couple, but who are not married |
| Percentage of Residents Living in a couple: In a registered same-sex civil partnership or cohabiting (same-sex) | This tells you the percentage of all the “households” in your postcode that are comprised of two people of the same sex living together as in a civil partnership |
| Z score: Residents Not living in a couple: Total | This tells how many standard deviations above or bellow the mean your postcode is regarding the percentage of “households” that are NOT comprised of people cohabiting and living together as partners |
| Percentage of Residents Not living in a couple: Single (never married or never registered a same-sex civil partnership) | This tells you the percentage of all the “households” in your postcode that are comprised of single people who have never been married or in a civil partnership |
| Percentage of Residents Not living in a couple: Married or in a registered same-sex civil partnership | This tells you the percentage of all the “households” in your postcode that are comprised of people who live seperately despite being married or in a same-sex civil partnership |
| Percentage of Residents Not living in a couple: Separated (but still legally married or still legally in a same-sex civil partnership) | This tells you the percentage of all the “households” in your postcode that are comprised of people who are seperated but are still legally married or in a civil partnership |
| Percentage of Residents Not living in a couple: Divorced or formerly in a same-sex civil partnership which is now legally dissolved | This tells you the percentage of all the “households” in your postcode that are comprised of people who are divorsed or who were formerly in a same-sex civil that is now legally disolved |
| Percentage of Residents Not living in a couple: Widowed or surviving partner from a same-sex civil partnership | This tells you the percentage of all the “households” in your postcode that are comprised of people who are widowed or who are the surviving partner from a same-sex civil partnership |
Definition
A household is defined as, people living alone (excluding those persons living in a “communal establishment”) or as a group of people (not necessarily related) living at the same address, who share cooking facilities and share a living room or sitting room or dining area. This allows measuring the prevalence of households bound by a union (i.e. as a couple) irrespective of their legal status.
(Photograph: Pablo Heimplatz, Wikimedia Commons)
Why the metric matters from a commercial inhabitant’s perspective
Commercial inhabitants will be interested to know the living arrangements of the residents living in their immediate vicinity because this will inform them of how traditional or otherwise the area is. For example, if the majority of persons aged 30 - 44 in an area are married it is likely to tell you that the populace does not live an alternative lifestyle and therefore would respond better to corresponding goods and services. For example, if you are going to start an all-night cereal café, a neighbourhood of London with one of the highest proportions of married couples is unlikely to be the area where such an offering will be most successful.
Conventional forms of accommodation and housing will also be most widely taken up in areas where a high proportion of the aforementioned age group are married and vice versa - e.g. commune-style living is far rarer in areas that are heavy in this demographic. If a high number of people cohabit when they are separated or divorced this can also tell you something about competition for housing in the area.
Why the metric matters from a residential inhabitant’s perspective
Residents will be interested to know the living arrangements of their immediate neighbours because this will tell them how conventional or otherwise their neighbourhood is. Areas with high proportions of people who are married or in a civil partnership will be likely to contain neighbours who come and go at fairly standard times and are more likely to want to contribute to the local community. This is probably the more ideal set up for someone in the same stage of life, whereas if you live in a flat share you will want the amenities that are more commonly required by people who also live in the same circumstances, such as more late-night services and a higher degree of late night entertainment.
Further, cohabitation before and after marriage, or living as a couple with one set of parents, might tell you about local market forces such as a poor supply of affordable housing which is preventing people from living in separate family units.
Similarly, high rates of divorce and widowing in the immediate vicinity may indicate particular local issues causing disproportionate pressures on marriages or life-expectancies such as poor housing standards, low levels of employment locally and low levels of job availability locally.
General commentary
Demographers are interested in living arrangements because they tell you not just about levels of marriage and civil partnership but also whether people cohabit instead of marriage or civil partnership or if they cohabit before and after those events, which informs us of a great deal extra than marriage and civil partnership rates alone tell us.
Across England and Wales, the percentage of single people who have never been married rose in proportion from 30 per cent in 2001 to 35 per cent in 2011. London had eight of the ten local authorities with the highest proportions of single people in the adult population in 2011; the highest was Islington at six in ten people, which is owing to London having a higher proportion of young persons relative to the rest of the population than the rest of England and Wales. Unsurprisingly given these statistics, seven of the ten areas with the lowest proportions of married people across England and Wales were within London, with the lowest proportion of all being found in Islington where only one in four of the adult population was married. Again, this appeared to be owing to the particularly young demographic in this area; the overall adult median age was 33 which was lower than in other areas of London. The only other areas of the country with such a young demographic were university towns. Conversely, civil partnerships were more common in London than anywhere else in England and Wales - nine out of ten of the areas where they were most common were in London. Demographers are interested in marriage rates because they may hold the key to the perceived housing crisis – that is the perceived undersupply of housing in the capital. Actually, on the numbers, if the rate of marriage breakdown was slowed and reversed to pre-1960s levels then the current housing stock would be more than adequate for the number of households but separation and divorce generally cause households to fragment, requiring two dwellings suddenly where one sufficed before.
Given the higher proportion of singletons in London, one may be surprised to learn that the lowest rates of divorce are in London. All of these areas, which included Tower Hamlets and Harrow had a higher proportion of young persons relative to the rest of the population than average with the adult median age ranging from 31.6 in areas of Tower Hamlets to 42.4 in parts of Harrow. Also these areas had higher proportions of Indian persons and the lowest proportions of White British persons, which might have a bearing on attitudes towards divorce. Also, the areas of England and Wales with the lowest number of widows were all in London, which was again a factor of the young age structure of many London neighbourhoods.
Nine of the top ten local authorities with the highest concentrations of those who were married or in a civil partnership but not living with their spouse or civil partner were found in parts of London, with the highest percentage being areas of the City of London, where almost one in five were married or in a civil partnership but not living with their other half. In highly urban areas such as these, the driver behind this statistic is likely to be people locating themselves in the City for work. Other areas of London with high levels of such patterns of cohabitation were Newham and Brent where a high proportion of the population (54 per cent and 55 per cent respectively) were born abroad so their spouses may still live abroad.
When considering cohabitation, that is living together without being married or in a civil partnership - eight out of the ten areas with the lowest proportions of cohabiting couples were in London, with the lowest levels found in areas of Harrow (5.7 per cent) and Redbridge (6.9 per cent). These areas correspond respectively to areas with the lowest EL levels of people stating that they had ‘no religion’, so evidently, these populations are less likely to live together before marriage.
Trivia
The tradition that brides wear a white dress in the western world was started by Queen Victoria in 1840. Until she set the trend, brides wore their finest gown to wed their groom. Japan happened to be way ahead of Queen Victoria as white was always the preferred colour for brides.
History
1753 marked the year that marriage came under the purview of the state as it became a legal requirement to be married in a church or chapel by a minister, otherwise, the union was void. Couples also had to issue a formal marriage announcement, called banns, or obtain a licence.
The Marriage Act of 1836 allowed for non-religious civil marriages to be held in registry offices and for people to marry in their own places of Worship - until this point regardless of religion the Church of England had to oversee the marriage.
Before 1858, divorce was rare and required an act of Parliament. It was only in 1858 that divorce could be carried out via legal process. Even then divorce was too expensive for most people, and there was the added challenge for wives of proving “aggravated” adultery - that their husbands had been guilty of cruelty, desertion, bigamy, incest, sodomy or bestiality.
In the late nineteenth century, the introduction of the first more widespread contraceptives meant that marriage and procreation did not have to go hand in hand at least within the Anglican and Church of England religions.
In the 1960s divorce suddenly became more common after the Divorce Reform Act of 1969, because couples could cite marital breakdown as the reason for the split rather than having to go to lengths to gain evidence of one of the previous grounds.
The Marriage Act of 1949 as amended by the 1983 Act gave legal recognition to Jewish or Quaker marriages in any building as long as they took place under a registrar’s certificate or licence and the certificate was delivered to the registering officer, and to Roman Catholic, non-Church of England and Muslim weddings as long as they took place within a certified building. Many couples do not necessarily wish to get married within these buildings, and these buildings are not always certified so they will need to register their marriage in a registry office after the event.
The first ceremonies under the Civil Partnerships Act took place in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales in December 2005.