To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office how many and what percentage of children were living in workless households in each local education authority area in Tyne and Wear in each year from 1999 to 2009. (302456)

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

Letter from Jil Matheson, dated November 2009:

As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question on how many and what percentage of children were living in workless households in each local education authority area in Tyne and Wear in each year from 1999 to 2009. (302456)

Information at local education authority level comes from the Annual Population Survey (APS) household dataset, which is only available from 2004 to 2008. The number and percentage of children living in workless households for January to December for each year are shown in table 1.

Figures for children in households are based on children aged under 16 years old living in working-age households. A working-age household is a household that includes at least one person of working-age, that is a woman aged 16 to 59 or a man aged 16 to 64.

As with any sample survey, estimates from the APS are subject to a margin of uncertainty as different samples give different results. Table 2 shows the percentage and confidence intervals for January to December 2008. This is to give an indication as to the accuracy of the most recent estimates, and how much they could vary if taken from a different sample. These estimates are such that there is 95 per cent. certainty that from all samples possible they will lie within the lower and upper bounds.