Health
Partnership continues to be the healthiest state
Comparing the risk of poor general health by family type the relative risk of poor health is lower for those who have a partner.
At ages 20-64 there are only very small differences between couples with or without a child in the household. Those with a child tend to be slightly better on the majority of indicators but this is not true for older men, and differences are not statistically significant.
Those without a partner, irrespective of whether they have a child or not, do worse on most indicators. The disadvantages of these non-partnered groups are larger on the psychological measures of social support and this contributes to the poorer scores for general health.
Among older people, there is a divergence, with women tending to receive less benefit from partnership (which is overwhelmingly marriage at these ages) than men. These findings are consistent with earlier results and those from other industrialised countries.
Relative risk of a limited long-term illness of a child (natural mother and father =1), 2001, Great Britain
The healthiest children are found in families with both natural parents.
The 2001 Census showed almost two thirds of children under 16 were living with both natural parents and no stepsiblings, about one in five lived with a lone mother and the rest in a variety of parental arrangements. In total, about one in ten children live in a family unit that contains some children that are not the natural children of the male partner.
The chart shows the relative risks of a child being reported as having a long-standing illness compared with those in families that contain only the natural children of the partners. Children in all other family types have values above one, showing they are more likely to have a long-standing illness.
The highest values are for those not in a family, but the next highest group, with chance of illness about two thirds higher than the reference group, is children living with a lone mother. The excess risk of other family types shown in the chart is generally about 30 per cent higher than for the reference group.
These results do not show the causal relationship and so do not necessarily indicate that the family type is causing the limiting long-standing ill health; they may also reflect difficulties child health cause to family relationships.
Source: 2001 Health Survey for England, Department of Health; Census 2001, Office for National Statistics; Census 2001, General Register Office for Scotland
Notes: The group 'natural parents and stepmother and stepfather' is a family unit where there are natural children of both partners, and each partner also has one or more children by another partner.
Results in the analysis above are both from models that control for age by including linear and quadratic age terms (not shown).
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