Methodological News, December Quarter 2024

This issue contains one article:

• Construction of family and household structures for the Life Course Data Initiative

The ABS is looking to construct family and household structures from administrative data  for the pilot Life Course Data Initiative (LCDI) - a program funded by the Australian government under the Targeting Entrenched Disadvantage package. This pilot program will create a linked administrative dataset, the Life Course Dataset, that will be used by the ABS and approved LCDI research partners to generate insights that inform responses to address disadvantage, particularly for children and communities. The pilot dataset is expected to include the existing ABS Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA) linked to additional data from the Commonwealth and two jurisdictions (ACT and SA). Creating family and household structures is a key methodological enhancement planned for the pilot dataset. More information about the Life Course Data Initiative is available on the ABS website.  

Identifying and linking persons to families and households, and understanding their changes over time, is fundamental for the longitudinal analysis of entrenched disadvantage. While the Census provides comprehensive information about families and households, it does so only every five years. The PLIDA more readily enables longitudinal analysis but does not explicitly identify the families or households of persons.  For the Life Course Dataset, families and households would need to be derived from PLIDA information and, where possible, additional linked datasets. Further, definitions of family and household need to be both useful for analysts and obtainable from the available data sources.  

Proposed definitions and methodologies for LCDI family and household structures are described below. As these structures would be derived from PLIDA information, and additional linked datasets where possible, it is important to highlight the privacy mechanisms used to maximise the use of PLIDA data while keeping it secure. These privacy protections are described in Privacy in PLIDA | Australian Bureau of Statistics . Various protections are applied at the levels of the data systems, the data assets and the PLIDA projects. One such protection is a biennial PLIDA Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) which is currently being undertaken. This PIA will consider any privacy concerns associated with the construction of family and household structures, and the LCDI will be consistent with the outcomes of that process. 

It is planned for household structures to be based on the geocoded location information from the Medicare, Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and Centrelink datasets that form the core of the PLIDA. Raw addresses would not be used, but rather de-identified unique address identifiers. Information from these address sources would be consolidated to determine the best possible address for a person at any time point during the PLIDA reference period (currently 2006 to 2023). Household structures are expected to be provided as annual snapshots of persons who are alive and physically present in the country and who are identified as sharing an address on the snapshot date. For some persons, address information may be missing, or their location may only be available at a higher geographic level. When it is reasonable, relationship information would be used to infer the household in these cases. 

Family structures are planned to be child-centred, initially focusing on identifying relationships for children born in the 2006-07 financial year. Conceptually, the family structures should capture all significant relationships in a child's life, and in theory, these may include extended family members (e.g. grandparents) and relationships that are not co-located. This may be difficult in practice. Explicit relationship data (albeit imperfect) is available in the PLIDA (particularly for parent-child and partner relationships) and the Census (particularly for co-located persons). Additional datasets such as birth registrations, childcare data, and spouse data from the ATO would be used where possible. Children in shared care are of particular interest, but further data sources are likely required to capture these relationships successfully.   

Unlike household structures, family structures would be episodic in nature, with relationships for the 2006-07 children cohort having a start date and (sometimes) an end date. When relationships are missing or not provided explicitly in the data sources, the potential to infer these relationships would be investigated. For example, if person A is the parent of persons B and C, then it may be reasonable to infer that persons B and C are siblings. In cases where relationships cannot be determined explicitly or reasonably inferred, the possibility of modelling the relationship type for co-located persons will be explored. This would involve modelling Census data against covariates such as age and gender provided by the PLIDA. Decisions on whether to use inference or modelling would be guided by a technical working group and stakeholder’s feedback.  

Constructing family and household structures is challenging, but it is crucial for the LCDI and of significant interest to PLIDA analysts. To help guide ABS development, a technical working group consisting of government and academic experts has been established. Pending the outcomes of the PLIDA PIA, household structures and family structures are expected to be available to approved LCDI research partners during 2025. Following this, potential enhancements to the family and household structures will be investigated, along with options to make these structures available more widely to PLIDA users. 

For more information about the LCDI or the development of family and household structures, please contact life.course@abs.gov.au.  

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