Data from the Australian Census of Population and Housing are typically supplied to users in the form of flat files in which each record pertains to a single individual. Dwelling, family and person identifiers are provided so that users may reorganise the data hierarchically, and this arrangement appears to satisfy the requirements of most users. However, many important research questions rely upon extracting more detailed information on family interrelationships from the data. Examples include the analysis of fertility rates, social mobility across generations, patterns of intermarriage and ethnic identification and social inclusion for members of jobless households.

On every Australian Census household form, a reference person is identified and other household respondents are asked to define their relationship to this person. Based upon this reported direct relationship and responses to other Census questions, it is often possible to deduce information on the relationships between other family household occupants – in particular spousal, sibling and parent-child relationships.

Drawing on international experience from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) project, this paper proposes an extension of the ‘own-children’ method to identify family interrelationships.  This ‘family tree’ method may be used in-house at the ABS to develop customised Census datasets for researchers who require such information.  Current users of Census data may also apply the method to their existing datasets.

Dr Guangyu Zhang and Paul Campbell are methodologists from the Analytical Services Branch at the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.