Focus on Families looks at family types and explores similarities and differences between them. It also examines the relationship between families and health, unpaid care and education.

The total number of families reached 17.1 million in 2006, but the number of families headed by a married couple fell by half a million between 1996 and 2006, to just over 12 million. At the same time both lone-mother and cohabiting couple families increased so that both family types now total 2.3 million each.

• Download full report & data

List of annual publications

• Families

  Cohabiting grows faster than
  other family types

• Households

  Rise in non-family households

  
  
• Unpaid care

  Cohabiting couples provide less unpaid care

• Structure & education

  Children in married couple families have higher qualifications

  
  
• Partnership & education

  Women with qualifications marry later

• Geographic distribution

  London has low proportion of stepfamilies with dependent children

• Health

  Partnership continues to be the healthiest state

  
  

• • Feedback or Enquiries
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Statement
• Crown Copyright applies unless otherwise stated
•