Harmonised households: ménages à ménager (HHMM)

The project is concerned with how the household is defined, and how this definition is used in censuses and surveys in each of the five study countries. The project team explored how household-level data were collected and used along the chain of production – from commissioners of studies to fieldworkers, through to analysts or other users of data – and the extent to which definitions of the household represented the lived experience of being in a ‘household’. Intergenerational relationships were a lens used to examine whether household-level survey data were able to capture exchanges of intergenerational care, including care that occurs outside the household. Against a background of increasing life expectancy, changing lifestyles and living arrangements (recomposed families, transnational movements, the nuclear family becoming less common), and reductions in public spending on welfare, the topic was chosen to reflect the need to explore how older people are cared for and to provide insights into the adequacy of data collected at the household level in taking account of these exchanges. Analysing the diverse contexts in which care is provided, and understanding the (in)adequacy of household surveys to capture current trends, has implications for policies that are informed by household-level data