In 2023, almost nine million people lived in Greater London, making it the most populated ceremonial county in England. The West Midlands Metropolitan County, which contains the large city of Birmingham, was the second-largest county at 2.98 million inhabitants, followed by Greater Manchester and then West Yorkshire with populations of 2.95 million and 2.4 million, respectively. Kent, Essex, and Hampshire were the three next-largest counties in terms of population, each with around 1.89 million people. A patchwork of regions England is just one of the four countries that compose the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with England, Scotland and Wales making up Great Britain. England is therefore not to be confused with Great Britain or the United Kingdom as a whole. Within England, the next subdivisions are the nine regions of England, containing various smaller units such as unitary authorities, metropolitan counties and non-metropolitan districts. The counties in this statistic, however, are based on the ceremonial counties of England as defined by the Lieutenancies Act of 1997. Regions of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland Like England, the other countries of the United Kingdom have their own regional subdivisions, although with some different terminology. Scotland’s subdivisions are council areas, while Wales has unitary authorities, and Northern Ireland has local government districts. As of 2022, the most-populated Scottish council area was Glasgow City, with over 622,000 inhabitants. In Wales, Cardiff had the largest population among its unitary authorities, and in Northern Ireland, Belfast was the local government area with the most people living there.

This dataset as reported to the Rural Payments Agency contains information on cattle that were alive on 1 December 2006 but have consequently died all cattle registered to holdings on the Isle of Wight, All premises types except slaughterhouses e.g. farms, markets animals with anomalous movement histories due to missing movement reports. Attribution statement:

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The aim of the study was to provide an estimation of population sizes at fixed times during the period when parish registration is the main source of demographic information.
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The text file is a dictionary listing all the evidence given in the other data file and describing the format. The data file consists of all the standard data available from a variety of sources such as Hearth Taxes, Visitations and Censuses, arranged in parish and chronological order, and in a format capable of analysis by the University of Pittsburgh SPSS program.

Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.

Understanding Society, (UK Household Longitudinal Study), which began in 2009, is conducted by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex and the survey research organisations Verian Group (formerly Kantar Public) and NatCen. It builds on and incorporates, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), which began in 1991.

The Understanding Society: Calendar Year Dataset, 2022, is designed for analysts to conduct cross-sectional analysis for the 2022 calendar year. The Calendar Year datasets combine data collected in a specific year from across multiple waves and these are released as separate calendar year studies, with appropriate analysis weights, starting with the 2020 Calendar Year dataset. Each subsequent year, an additional yearly study is released.

The Calendar Year data is designed to enable timely cross-sectional analysis of individuals and households in a calendar year. Such analysis can, however, only involve variables that are collected in every wave (excluding rotating content, which is only collected in some of the waves). Due to overlapping fieldwork, the data files combine data collected in the three waves that make up a calendar year. Analysis cannot be restricted to data collected in one wave during a calendar year, as this subset will not be representative of the population. Further details and guidance on this study can be found in the document 9333_main_survey_calendar_year_user_guide_2022.

These calendar year datasets should be used for cross-sectional analysis only. For those interested in longitudinal analyses using Understanding Society please access the main survey datasets: End User Licence version or Special Licence version.

Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study, started in 2009 with a general population sample (GPS) of UK residents living in private households of around 26,000 households and an ethnic minority boost sample (EMBS) of 4,000 households. All members of these responding households and their descendants became part of the core sample who were eligible to be interviewed every year. Anyone who joined these households after this initial wave was also interviewed as long as they lived with these core sample members to provide the household context. At each annual interview, some basic demographic information was collected about every household member, information about the household is collected from one household member, all 16+-year-old household members are eligible for adult interviews, 10-15-year-old household members are eligible for youth interviews, and some information is collected about 0-9 year-olds from their parents or guardians. Since 1991 until 2008/9 a similar survey, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), was fielded. The surviving members of this survey sample were incorporated into Understanding Society in 2010. In 2015, an immigrant and ethnic minority boost sample (IEMBS) of around 2,500 households was added. In 2022, a GPS boost sample (GPS2) of around 5,700 households was added. To know more about the sample design, following rules, interview modes, incentives, consent, and questionnaire content, please see the study overview and user guide.

Co-funders

In addition to the Economic and Social Research Council, co-funders for the study included the Department of Work and Pensions, the Department for Education, the Department for Transport, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, the Department for Community and Local Government, the Department of Health, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Assembly Government, the Northern Ireland Executive, the Department of Environment and Rural Affairs, and the Food Standards Agency.

End User Licence and Special Licence versions:

There are two versions of the Calendar Year 2022 data. One is available under the standard End User Licence (EUL) agreement (SN 9333), and the other is a Special Licence (SL) version (SN 9334). The SL version contains month and year of birth variables instead of just age, more detailed country and occupation coding for a number of variables and various income variables have not been top-coded (see document 9333_eul_vs_sl_variable_differences for more details). Users are advised first to obtain the standard EUL version of the data to see if they are sufficient for their research requirements. The SL data have more restrictive access conditions; prospective users of the SL version will need to complete an extra application form and demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the additional variables in order to get permission to use that version. The main longitudinal versions of the Understanding Society study may be found under SNs 6614 (EUL) and 6931 (SL).

Low- and Medium-level geographical identifiers produced for the mainstage longitudinal dataset can be used with this Calendar Year 2022 dataset, subject to SL access conditions. See the User Guide for further details.

Suitable data analysis software

These data are provided by the depositor in Stata format. Users are strongly advised to analyse them in Stata. Transfer to other formats may result in unforeseen issues. Stata SE or MP software is needed to analyse the larger files, which contain about 1,800 variables.

The aim of the Centre for Population Change (CPC) General Household Survey (GHS) Database project was twofold. The first objective was to create a new data resource, assembling in a single data file, in harmonised form, a time series of repeated cross-sectional GHS survey data on demographic histories relating to fertility, marriage and cohabitation. The second objective was to use this new data resource to analyse the changing dynamics of childbearing and partnership over recent decades, and especially to examine the determinants of the changing timetable of fertility and partnership. The data are a subset, in harmonised form, of all GHS rounds 1979-2009, with those from 1998-2009 being Special Licence editions plus the previous 1972-2004 Time Series GHS Dataset. From 2008, the GHS was known as the General Lifestyle Survey until it closed in 2012. See the UK Data Service General Lifestyle Survey series webpage (http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/series/?sn=200019) for the original catalogue records. Further information about construction of the database can be found in the documentation. Information about the overall project can be found on the ESRC Centre for Population Change: Understanding Population Change in the 21st Century award page (http://www.researchcatalogue.esrc.ac.uk/grants/RES-625-28-0001/read). The Secure Access version replaces the previous Special Licence version that was held under SN 7666, which is no longer available. Prospective users of the Secure Access data will need to fulfil additional requirements, including completion of face-to-face training and agreement to Secure Access' User Agreement and Breaches Penalties Policy, in order to obtain permission to use that version (see 'Access' section below). Full citation: The Principal Investigators' preferred full citation for the database is as follows: Beaujouan, E., Ni Bhrolcháin, M., Berrington, A., Falkingham, J. Centre for Population Change General Household Survey Database, 1979-2009: Secure Access [computer file]. Office for National Statistics. Social Survey Division, [original data producer(s)]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], March 2015. SN: 8099, http://dx.doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-8099-1

This statistic shows a ranking of the leading pets owned by households in the United Kingdom (UK) between 2016 and 2019, broken down by region. In London, 14 percent of people were cat owners, while 9 percent owned a dog, making this the only region were cats were more popular than dogs.

In total, 45 percent of the UK population own a pet . This figure has increased by five percent since 2016. Over 90 percent of pet owners in the UK say that owning a pet makes them feel happy and 88 percent feel that pet ownership improves their overall quality of life.

With such as high ownership of pets in the United Kingdom, this leads the path for retailers in a growing and dynamic market. Pet food has a key role to play, with dog and cat food alone estimated at 2.5 billion British pounds in 2017.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This computerised transcription of the census enumerators' books for the 1881 Census for England, Scotland and Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man is a by-product of a project to create a microfiche index of the population of Great Britain for genealogists. Covering the entire enumerated population of England, Scotland and Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man in 1881, it is the largest collection of historical source material to be made available in computerised form. The data consists of the name, address, relationship to the head of household, marital status, age, occupation and birthplace of some 26 million individuals, together with information about disabilities.
In 1999 the Genealogical Society of Utah published a version of this computerised transcription as a CD-ROM product suitable for genealogical research (Genealogical Society of Utah (1999) 1881 British census and national index. [25 CDs]. Salt Lake City, Utah: GSU). This study is an enriched version of these data.
The sample is a 5 per cent random sample of the parishes of Great Britain. The sample was chosen in the simplest manner possible. A list of all the parishes in England, Wales, Scotland and the Islands in the British Seas was created; using a random number generator in Microsoft Excel, a random number between zero and one was allocated to each parish. All those less than or equal to 0.05 were selected for the sample. The records relating to the individuals in each of these parishes were then extracted from the data and combined in a database.

Tables B1 and B3 in Appendix B of the documentation list the 716 parishes in the sample.
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Main variables
PRO reference; piece number; folio number; page number; county; parish; address; surname; first name; relationship to head of household; marital status; gender; age; occupation; place of birth; disabilities.

Understanding Society (the UK Household Longitudinal Study), which began in 2009, is conducted by the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Essex, and the survey research organisations Verian Group (formerly Kantar Public) and NatCen. It builds on and incorporates, the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), which began in 1991.

The Understanding Society: UKMOD Input Data, 2010-2019: Special Licence Access dataset provides input data for the longitudinal version of the UKMOD microsimulation model. The longitudinal version of UKMOD runs on Understanding Society data and covers the period 2010-2019 (Waves 1-11). The UKHLS is a large panel survey with a sample of approximately 40,000 households in its first wave. It contains detailed income data and a wide range of demographic and labour market information. As such it is the primary survey of interest in the UK for those interested in longitudinal analysis.

UKMOD is a tax-benefit microsimulation model (MSM) for the UK and its constituent nations (England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland) that originated from EUROMOD. Since 2020 UK MOD has replaced, as a stand-alone model, the UK component of EUROMOD. UKMOD is freely accessible, released open-source, and thoroughly documented and validated using external data. The standard cross-sectional version of UKMOD uses the Family Resources Survey (FRS) as its input dataset.

A tax-benefit microsimulation model is a computer code that calculates disposable income for each micro-unit (such as individual or household) in a representative sample of the population, under a specific policy scenario. Based on micro-level information about the individual and household characteristics and on legislative rules, UKMOD simulates the amount of fiscal liabilities and benefit entitlements at the tax-benefit unit level.

Tax-benefit microsimulation models are used to answer "what if" questions about the effects of tax and benefit reforms on household incomes and the income distribution. Such analysis is regularly performed for Budget and other Government policy announcements, and is also highly relevant for the design of alternative reforms and new policy instruments taking account of the diverse economic circumstances of the UK population. The longitudinal version of the data allows researchers to address additional questions, for example about the evolution of outcomes of interest over time. It also allows UKMOD outputs to be linked with additional information not used by the tax and benefit model but present in the UKHLS data for example, about labour market activity, retirement, health and wellbeing and others.

SN 9147 can be used on its own with UKMOD and is sufficient to conduct typical UKMOD analysis. For applicants seeking to add additional Understanding Society variables not included in the UKMOD dataset SN 9147, accessing SN 6614 (Safeguarded / EUL) and linking it to dataset SN 9147 normally provides a sufficient level of detail. However, in some instances, the desired variables may only be available in the safeguarded / Special Licence equivalent, SN 6931. Full details of how to link the datasets are provided in the User Guide.

In 2022, London had a gross domestic product of over 508 billion British pounds, by far the most of any region of the United Kingdom. The region of South East England which surrounds London had the second-highest GDP in this year, at over 341 billion pounds. North West England, which includes the major cities of Manchester and Liverpool, had the third-largest GDP among UK regions, at approximately 223.5 billion pounds. Levelling Up the UK London’s economic dominance of the UK can clearly be seen when compared to the other regions of the country. In terms of GDP per capita, the gap between London and the rest of the country is striking, standing at 57,338 pounds per person in the UK capital, compared with just over 33,593 pounds in the rest of the country. To address the economic imbalance, successive UK governments have tried to implement "levelling-up policies", which aim to boost investment and productivity in neglected areas of the country. The success of these programs going forward may depend on their scale, as it will likely take high levels of investment to reverse economic neglect regions have faced in the recent past. Overall UK GDP The gross domestic product for the whole of the United Kingdom amounted to 2.56 trillion British pounds in 2024. During this year, GDP grew by 0.9 percent, following a growth rate of 0.4 percent in 2023. Due to the overall population of the UK growing faster than the economy, however, GDP per capita in the UK fell in both 2023 and 2024. Nevertheless, the UK remains one of the world’s biggest economies, with just five countries (the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and India) having larger economies. It is it likely that several other countries will overtake the UK economy in the coming years, with Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, and Mexico all expected to have larger economies than Britain by 2050.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The 1981 Census Microdata Individual File for Great Britain: 5% Sample dataset was created from existing digital records from the 1981 Census under a project known as Enhancing and Enriching Historic Census Microdata Samples (EEHCM), which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council with input from the Office for National Statistics and National Records of Scotland. The project ran from 2012-2014 and was led from the UK Data Archive, University of Essex, in collaboration with the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research (CMIST) at the University of Manchester and the Census Offices. In addition to the 1981 data, the team worked on files from the 1961 Census and 1971 Census.

The original 1981 records preceded current data archival standards and were created before microdata sets for secondary use were anticipated. A process of data recovery and quality checking was necessary to maximise their utility for current researchers, though some imperfections remain (see the User Guide for details). Three other 1981 Census datasets have been created:

• SN 8242 - 1981 Census Microdata Household File for Great Britain: 0.95% Sample, which links household members together to allow individuals to be understood within their household context, and is available to registered UK Data Service users based in the United Kingdom (see Access section for non-UK access restrictions);
• SN 8243 - 1981 Census Microdata Teaching Dataset for Great Britain: 1% Sample: Open Access, which can be used as a taster file and is freely available for anyone to download under an Open Government Licence; and
• SN 8248 - 1981 Census Microdata for Great Britain: 9% Sample: Secure Access, which comprises a larger population sample and so contains sufficient information to constitute personal data, meaning that it is only available to Accredited Researchers, under restrictive Secure Access conditions.

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The file contains information on individuals in larger local authorities. Topics covered include demographics, for example family and household circumstances, employment and qualifications, migration, commuting, car ownership, and housing.