Roy Carr Hill

Finding and Counting Difficult to Reach
Population groups; and some

Observations on ‘Household’ Surveys
for
Understanding Households
Edinburgh, 13th March 2018i
Roy Carr-Hill
UCL Institute of Education and
Independent Consultant
Introduction
• Used administrative data extensively in the 1990s for
designing resource allocation formulae for care
services and health services in 4 nations
• Since 2000, have been preoccupied by the undercount
of the poorest in developing countries
• This will not be a perfectly constructed talk: (a) title is
changed because here are very few strictly non-
household populations (however defined) in the UK
• (b) difficult to reach population groups are, and have
been pervasive forever. But there are several non-
compatible categories.
• ©The term ‘counted’ is used loosely; most of those in
the institutional group considered below can be
counted but we have very little other information
about them
Home- Care Mili- Pri- Refugees Noma- Urban TOTAL
less/ homes/ tary sons and Illegal dic/ Slums
chil- hospi- Immi- Pastor-
dren tals grants alist
(Gypsies)
Gobal Min. n.e. 25.0 92.0 9.8 36.5 21.8 82.8 267.9
(millions) Max n.e. 35.0 92.0 9.8 73.0 43.5 175.6 438.9
.
Status of B B A C B C
estimate
UK 83.0 678.0 108 90.0 238 150.0 Ne. 1,337

(thousands)
Status of A A A A C B A
estimate
Poor or not in the UK?
• Military: not in UK or other developed countries
• Homeless / street children almost by definition
• Those in or just released from 446 prison
(90,000) have low or very low incomes, as have
most (say 75 per cent) of the 238,000 unofficial
refugees (Doyle, 2008), and an estimated 80 per
cent of the 150,000 gypsies and travellers
(Cemlyn et al., 2009), making a total of 398,000.
• The income situation of the largest groups –
those in hospitals or care homes (678,000) – is
less clear
• Care homes: depends on funding regulations
• Hospitals: morbidity confounded with poverty
but, in developed countries more with age, so
levels of poverty depend on pension provision
Counting Institutional Populations
• Those in institutions (care homes/ hospitals,
military or prisons) can be head-counted but
apart from relevant institutional status, gender
and perhaps age, we have no other information
about them.
• In principle, this can be relatively easily remedied
by making agreements with the appropriate
authorities; but actually carrying out the census
may be difficult, especially in hospitals where
proxy respondents may have to be used
• Another problem in many cases is that there is
potential double counting with their
(temporarily) broken household
Counting Homeless/ street children
• These are the only strictly non-household
groups (in terms of residence)
• On census night, ONS do carry out a count in
major cities
• There have also been several experiments
(including by ONS?) with the capture/
recapture method; but.
• I don’t know how to validate their results
other than perhaps by interviewing a sample
of ‘The Big Issue’ sellers; and e.g. Salvation
Army personnel
Refugees and Illegal Immigrants
• Probably the hardest group to track and
understand
• Even official refugees in the UK would be more
reluctant than most to respond to surveys, and,
they will probably be poor.
• It almost goes without saying that illegal
immigrants or their ‘owners’ will be very
reluctant to respond to interviews. One could
argue that they are not relevant for social policy
but, if they remain and have children, they will
contribute to the social policy relevant population
• Reference Tyler, P. (2016) Radical Statistics
Newsletter 115
Counting gypsy & traveller populations (1)
• Many Romany gypsies are in caravans or semi-
formal camps and so can be counted and
interviewed; but many are not and travelers are
not and it will be difficult to count let alone
interview them. The problem here is more the
attribution of ethnic identity
• “policy-makers have failed to take into account
the intimidating and discouraging effects of
current or threatened policy on responses to
questions.” For example, questions about ‘Main
reason for travelling’ allows only one response
when many gypsies travel for several reasons;
also very few East European Roma accept the
term ‘gypsy’ (a direct translation of ‘Cigny’)
• Reference Acton et al (2016) Radical Statistics
Newsletter Issue 114
Counting those in Urban Slums
• We have few urban slums left in the UK but the
high rise blocks where lifts are not always
working will certainly include some unsurveyed
and uncensored people; our interviews with
interviewers demonstrate that they often
complete the questionnaire themselves;
• Even where the lifts are working the Grenfell
Towers experience shows that there is not always
a secure count of the numbers
Conclusion
• Globally, it is an international scandal that no
serious attempt has been made to count or
adjust for these missing populations; instead UN
statisticians etc have repeated, with no evidence,
that surveys provide good estimates
• Nationally, there was an ONS paper by Joloza in
2009 but the issues were substantially ignored by
Atkinson et al (2002) in discussing and proposing
measurements of social inclusion in Europe and
by Hills (2010) in analysing inequality in the UK
• The problem has to be taken much more
seriously.
Observations on Household Surveys
• Administrative data has a clear focus on activities
(e.g. alcohol consumed), dwellings (e.g. council
tax,), households (e.g. income tax, marriage and
divorce) or individuals (e.g. driving license,
voting)
• But so called household surveys, whilst
purporting to cover all those issues do not. Their
sampling frame is nearly always dwellings; but
the only surveys which focus on dwellings are
housing surveys; and although comprehensive
surveys list all members of the household
members and their relationship to a sometimes
fictive household head, they rarely establish a
relationship-based household.
Observations on Household Surveys (2)
• In fact, they are nearly always focussing on
collecting information (activities, behaviours,
practices; income; or attitudes)
• Comprehensive surveys will weight their achieved
sample to the last Census age-sex profile.
• For activities and practices, we should take into
account household relationships as activities and
practices are often shared (e.g. both drinking and
smoking are strongly influenced by how the
partner behaves)
• For attitudes, shouldn’t we also weight by the
probability of someone of that age and sex being
in a dwelling of that size and composition?

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Finding and Counting Difficult to Reach

Population groups; and some

UK 83.0 678.0 108 90.0 238 150.0 Ne. 1,337

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