Focus on Families looks at family types and explores similarities and differences between them. It also draws on demographic information to look at the many dimensions of families in the UK today.

The total number of families reached 17 million in 2004, but the number of families headed by a married couple fell by half a million between 1996 and 2004, to just over 12 million. At the same time both lone-mother and cohabiting couple families increased, to 2.3 million and 2.2 million respectively.

List of annual publications

• Families

  Married couple families still the majority

• Households

  More people living alone

  
  
• Dependent children

  1 in 4 in lone-parent families

• Stepfamilies

  10% of families are stepfamilies

  
  
• Age distribution

  Cohabiting couples are youngest families time

• Geographic distribution

  London has most lone-parent families

• Ethnicity

  4 in 5 Bangladeshi families have children

  
  
• Religion

  Muslim families most likely to have children

• Download Data
• Download summary report (pdf)

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