General health (3 categories)

Description: A person's assessment of the general state of their health from very good to very bad. This assessment is not based on a person's health over any specified period of time.

Comparability with 2011: Highly comparable

Number of disabled people in household (4 categories)

Description: The number of people in a household who assessed their day-to-day activities as limited by long-term physical or mental health conditions or illnesses and are considered disabled. This definition of a disabled person meets the harmonised standard for measuring disability and is in line with the Equality Act (2010).

Comparability with 2011: Broadly comparable All the categories in this variable reference the number of disabled people in the household. In the 2011 Census all categories referenced the number of persons in the household with a long-term health problem or disability.

Provision of unpaid care (5 categories)

Description: An unpaid carer may look after, give help or support to anyone who has long-term physical or mental ill-health conditions, illness or problems related to old age.
This does not include any activities as part of paid employment. This help can be within or outside of the carer's household.

Comparability with 2011: Broadly comparable. If you use this variable to compare with the same one used in the 2011 Census, you can combine the categories "less than 9 hours" with "10 to 19 hours" and "20 to 34 hours" with "35 to 49 hours".

The combination of the categories "less than 9 hours" and "10 to 19 hours" means that this does not exactly match the Census 2011 variable which had a "1 to 19 hours" category. It can still be used when comparing with data from the 2011 Census although there is a difference of one hour of care.