Unemployment
Cabinet Office
Grant Shapps (Shadow Minister (Housing), Communities and Local Government; Welwyn Hatfield, Conservative)
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office how many and what proportion of children in each (a) local authority area and (b) constituency were living in a workless household in (i) 1997, (ii) 2005 and (iii) the most recent year for which figures are available.
Angela Smith (Minister of State (Third Sector), Cabinet Office; Basildon, Labour)
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.
Letter from Stephen Penn e ck:
As Director General for the Office for National Statistics, I have been asked to reply to your question asking how many and what proportion of children in each (a) local authority area and (b) constituency were living in a workless household in (i) 1997, (ii) 2005 and (iii) the most recent year for which figures are available. (324541)
Information about children in workless households by (a) constituency and (b) local authority can only be obtained from the Annual Population Survey (APS) household datasets. However, due to the specific level of geographic detail you require, there are insufficient numbers in the sample to provide reliable estimates for practicable purposes. This is explained in an article published on the National Statistics website, published in August 2009, titled, "Quality Measures of household labour market indicators". It can be found at the following address:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/article.asp?ID=2272
The article explains that to provide robust estimates a larger geographical area would be needed and the following web link provides the number and percentage of children in workless households in 2008 for a range of geographic hierarchies across Great Britain:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_labour/WorklessChildren08.xls
Estimates shaded in grey are such that as mentioned they are not reliable for practical purposes.
The Annual Population Survey household datasets are only available for 2004 to 2008, so estimates for 1997 cannot be provided. To provide the same information for 2005 as at the above weblink would involve disproportional cost.