4130.0 - Housing Occupancy and Costs, 2015-16 Quality Declaration 
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 13/10/2017   
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INTRODUCTION


This publication presents data from the 2015–16 Survey of Income and Housing (SIH) on Australian housing occupancy and costs, and relates these to characteristics of occupants and dwellings such as tenure, family composition of household, dwelling structure, age, income and main source of income. The data also includes value of dwelling estimates and information on recent home buyers.

This publication includes Excel data cubes available from the ‘Downloads’ tab, with key indicators for various subpopulations and by a range of household characteristics, and by state and territory.


ABOUT THE SURVEY OF INCOME AND HOUSING

The SIH was conducted annually from 1994–95 to 1997–98, and then in 1999–2000, 2000–01 and 2002–03. Commencing in 2003–04 the SIH has been conducted every two years, and has been integrated with the Household Expenditure Survey (HES) every six years. In 2003–04 and 2009–10 the SIH was integrated with the HES, as it has been again in 2015–16. In 2005–06, 2007–08, 2011–12, and 2013–14, the SIH was run as a stand-alone survey.

The 2015–16 SIH collected information from a sample of approximately 17,800 households over the period July 2015 to June 2016.


CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE

Key changes in 2015–16 compared with 2013–14 include:

  • systematising and standardising the layout and presentation of data cubes. Data is now presented in separate data cubes based on key topics and for each state and territory. Information on housing costs, housing costs to income ratios and household estimates are presented in separate tables within most data cubes.
  • the expansion in the 2009–10 sample for an extra 4,200 households outside capital cities to support housing indicator reporting was maintained in this cycle as well as the additional sample of pensioner households for the HES;
  • additional data items on solar energy have been included;
  • the additional housing mobility content, available in 2013–14, was not collected in 2015–16;
  • the item identifying carers which was added in 2013–14 was not collected in 2015–16;
  • the microediting of income from government payments has been considerably improved in terms of accuracy through the introduction of an eligibility-based model designed by the Department of Social Services. This model has been used to identify reported government payment values outside the possible range of payments, replacing those values with the maximum or minimum possible amount for out-of-range values. All other reported values remain as reported. Some payment values are entirely modelled based on eligibility as in previous cycles of SIH. More information about the new model will be available in the Household Expenditure Survey and Survey of Income and Housing, User Guide, Australia, 2015-16 (cat. no. 6503.0). Microdata products will include both the reported and modelled values for comparison (except where reported payment values were out of the possible range).