Interviewer instructions
5.1.2 Household
The concept of household is defined taking into account the way in which people associate amongst themselves in order to provide individually or collectively for food and other basic needs.
Two types of households are distinguished: the ordinary household, and the collective household.
The ordinary household is composed of a collection of people, related or not, who recognize the authority of a single individual who is called "head of household," and who live under the same roof or in the same compound and take their daily meals together. The ordinary household is generally composed of the head of household, his spouse or spouses, and their unmarried children. In some rather common cases, the ordinary household can include married children of the head of household, relatives (parents, descendants, collaterals) of the head of the household, and sometimes, unrelated persons. The important fundamental criteria to respect in identifying the members of an ordinary household are that they:
1) Live under one roof or in the same compound
2) Recognize the authority of the head of household
3) Take their meals together.
It is important to emphasize that a person living alone, who provides for his/her own basic needs, i.e., food, lodging, clothing, etc., constitutes a household.
The collective household is composed of a group of persons without an a priori family relationship, who live together within a single institution for reasons of health, study, work, travel, punishment (discipline) or other. It is the institution which governs the conditions of their coexistence, taking into account its own objectives. The following institutions fall into this category:
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a) Boarding schools;
b) Military barracks;
c) Communal living establishments for beggars, and disabled people and their families;
d) Hotels;
e) Prisons;
f) Temporary construction sites;
g) Hospitals and other establishments;
h) Convents and other institutions; etc.
Ordinary and collective households are both a frame of reference in which people are identified and then counted; and statistical units of analysis. In effect, from the social, economic and demographic point of view it is very important to study certain characteristics of household, particularly those of households.
The type-of-household variable includes several modalities which are grouped at the numbering level into 2 broad categories:
1) Private household--1
2) Collective household--2
Thus for an ordinary household you would write: "Private household" and put a "1" in the corresponding box of the numbering grid. For a collective household you would write the name of the collective household as you have recorded it on the Identification and Numbering of Households and Buildings form, and then write "2" in the box of the numbering grid
