Chapter 3: Household characteristics
This chapter discusses household characteristics recorded in the 2005 Lao Census. Distinction was made between private and collective households.
A private household can be single person or multi-person households. (A) a single person household comprises of a dwelling unit, arranging for food and other life necessities on his/her own without joining other persons and possessing his/her own civil registration book. (B) a multi-person household comprises of a dwelling unit, and who together arrange for food and other life necessities and share a common registration book.
A collective household consists of accommodation units of a government, organization, enterprise, school, temple, hospital, etc. To be enumerated in a collective household the person must be registered under a common registration book for the collective household.
A household is not the same as a family. The difference is that a household may consist of one person or more persons not necessarily related by blood. A family must have at least two related members. The concept of family is not used in the census. In practice, however, a household is usually composed of a single family, or contains more than one family.
2.1. Number of Household and Household Size
Tables 3.1 and 3.2 show the total household population, in private households, numbers of households, and average household size by province and region. There were almost 952 386 private households in the country with a total population of almost 5.6 million persons. The average household size was 5.9 persons, slightly lower than in the 1995 census. The remainder of the population about 123 000 persons were living in collective households.
The distribution of household size by province and urban/rural presented in table 3.1 and 3.2. The provinces Sekong, Huaphanh and Xiengkhuang had the highest average household size about 6.5 members while Xayaboury, Vientiane Capital and Khammuane had the lowest average size about 5.5 members.
The household size is generally lower in urban areas as compared to rural areas and the size is also somewhat lower in rural areas with access to road than in areas without access to road.
Table 3.4 also shows the distribution of private households by size of household. Just over 1 percent of the households are single-person households, while 4 percent have more than 10 members, with 3 percent in urban, 4 in rural with road and 5.5 percent in rural without access to road.(Household Size by province)
3.2. Household Headship
Household headship is a household member who is recognized as a head of household. This person can be male or female.
On average 10 percent of private households were headed by women, in urban households 14 percent and in rural areas without road 7 percent (see table 3.4).
3.3. Collective Household
Table 3.7 shows that there are more males than females in collective households. On average women presented about one third and the adults at ages 15-24 make up two thirds of all collective household members. Further, one third of collective households are located in Vientiane Capital. Small size collective households are most common but there are a few having 100 and more members, most of them situated in Vientiane Capital and Vientiane Province.(Figure 3.1. Private Households by Household Size)
Contents:
- Population Size and structure
- Population Distribution and Migration Household Characteristics
- Education and Literacy
- Activity and Labor Force
- Fertility
- Mortality
- Housing Characteristics
- Population Projections
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