Housing

Understanding Society is one of the largest household panel studies available to study housing.

What data do Understanding Society collect?

Information is collected about the types of dwelling people live in and how the relationships between people who live together change over time as household members leave or relationships change. Economic data is collected on housing payments, assets, debts and housing benefit. Residential mobility information is collected about peoples preferences and expectation of moving and desirability of the area they live and any problems associated with the neighbourhood.

Using Understanding Society housing data

What can you do with these data?

Researchers can:

use the Study to examine the change in families and housing composition and how these are linked with changes in the housing type, location and characteristics of the houses people live in
look at the impact of policies, such as social security policies and housing consumption and people’s moving behaviour. Affordability of housing for different social groups
focus on the different types of dwellings, the housing they live in, whether it’s owned or rented, the number of rooms in a dwelling

Tips for analysts

Index terms

To find out about the variables in the Study use the index terms to search for housing variables including Housing: Size and Condition of Dwelling, Allowance/Rebates, Household Consumption: Consumer Durables.

Online training: Working more efficiently with Understanding Society

In this self-paced online course users will initially learn how to assemble a multifunctional longitudinal ‘data spine’ from the various Understanding Society datasets. Users will then learn how to enrich their data spine with information from individual and household interviews, as well as relationships between household members. This course uses UKHLS housing data as a basis.