From April 2001 the National Statistics Socio-economic classification (NS-SEC) was introduced for all official statistics and surveys. It has replaced Social Class based on occupation and Socio-economic Groups (SEG). See Appendix E for further information about NS-SEC. Table 4.12 shows the variation in tenure groups with respect to economic activity status and the new NS-SEC classification.

• In 64% of social sector households and 31% of both owner occupied and private renter households the household reference person was economically inactive.

Among households with an economically active household reference person;

• those headed by people in the semi-routine and routine groups were the least likely to own their property (61% each) compared with, for example, 94% of households headed by people within the large employer and higher managerial group;
• those in the routine and semi-routine groups were more likely than other households to be social sector tenants (29% and 25% respectively) compared with between 1% and 14% of other households.