6540.0 - Microdata: Household Expenditure, Income and Housing, 2015-16 Quality Declaration 
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 29/06/2018   
   Page tools: Print Print Page Print all pages in this productPrint All

FILE STRUCTURE

Record Level Types

The 2015-16 SIH and HES Basic CURF contain four levels of record files: Household, Income Unit, Person and Loans.
The detailed microdata file and TableBuilder includes more levels including the Superannuation, Childcare and Wealth.

Expenditure and COICOP levels are also included which contain information about weekly expenditure using the Household Expenditure Classification (HEC) and Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose (COICOP) respectively in the Basic CURF and detailed microdata products. The definition of these classifications can be found in the Household Expenditure Survey and Survey of Income and Housing, User Guide, Australia, 2015-16.

Different information is available for each record level.

The Household level includes information on:

  • State or territory of usual residence
  • Area of residence (Greater Capital City Area/Rest of state)
  • Housing characteristics such as tenure type and housing costs
  • Dwelling characteristics such as the number of bedrooms in the household
  • Household type and composition such as the number of families in the household
  • Household income
  • Household Expenditure (HES households only)
  • Fiscal Incidence Study (HES households only)
  • Household childcare costs, benefits, rebates, number of hours of childcare
  • Main source of income such as employee income or government pensions and allowances
  • Household wealth
  • Net imputed rent and gross imputed rent
  • Information relating to the household reference person

The Income Unit level includes information on:
  • Income unit income
  • Source of income such as employee income or government pensions and allowances (as for household level)
  • Weekly rent payments
  • Income unit type such as couple with dependants or lone person
  • Selected housing characteristics (including tenure type and landlord type)
  • Child care use, costs and subsidies
  • Demographic information

The Person level includes information on:
  • Age
  • Sex
  • Marital status
  • Relationship in household
  • Country of birth
  • Year of arrival in Australia
  • Family type
  • Income unit type such as couple with dependants or lone person (as for income unit level)
  • Labour force details such as employment status and hours worked per week
  • Occupation and industry
  • Education status
  • Education qualifications and education institution attending
  • Income
  • Source of income
  • Barriers to labour force participation due to child care related reasons
  • Carer payment and supplement
  • Information on personal assets, accounts with financial institutions and offset accounts
  • Fiscal Incidence Study (HES households only)
  • Superannuation
  • Disability, including type and severity

The Loans level contains information about the characteristics of each loan such as:
  • Main purpose of loan such as housing or vehicle
  • Characteristics of loan such as:
          • Security
          • Amount borrowed
          • Principal outstanding
          • Weekly repayment
These levels are only present in the DataLab product:

The Child care level contains information about the characteristics such as:
  • Cost of care
  • Type of care
  • Child care rebate and benefit
  • Income units

The Superannuation level contains information about the characteristics as:
  • Age at which recipient receives regular income from account
  • Type, value and duration of Superannuation account
  • Income units

The Wealth level contains information about the characteristics as:
  • Wealth value

The Household, Income Unit and Person levels are hierarchical: a person is a member of an income unit, which is a member of a household. The Loans, Wealth, Expenditure and COICOP levels are members of the household level. Superannuation are Child care members of the person level.

There are several identifiers on records at each level of the file. Weights are also included to enable population estimates. In the Basic CURF children under 15 years do not have their own person level record on the file. However, information on the number and ages of such children was collected and is included on the household and income unit level files. A complete list of the data items available on each record level is available from the Downloads tab.

Record Counts

Table 1 below shows the number of records on each level of the 2015-16 SIH and HES Basic CURF. The number of records on the unconfidentialised file are also included in the table for comparison.

2015-16 SIH and HES Basic CURF, RECORD COUNTS

SIH Basic
SIH Unconfidentialised
HES Basic
HES Unconfidentialised
no.
no.
no.
no.

Household
17,768
17,768
10,046
10,046
Income Unit
21,390
21,413
12,149
12,166
Person
33,913
33,968
19,218
19,254
Loans
10,992
10,992
5,894
5,894
Expenditure (HEC)
-
-
661,544
662,533
Expenditure (COICOP)
-
-
193,260
193,256

- nil or rounded to zero (including null cells)