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Spending on renting or buying a house.
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1. Main facts and figures
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in 2015/16, 14.3 million out of 22.6 million households in England (63%) owned their home either outright or with a mortgage
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one million out of 14.3 million homeowners in England (7%) bought their current home with financial help from family members
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There is little difference across all ethnic groups, including White British, in receiving financial help from family members to buy their homes
Things you need to know
Compared with White British households, ethnic minority households tend to be younger, to have lived in England for a shorter time and to be located in urban areas. They are also likely to live in larger households and in rented accommodation.
So that there is a large enough number of ethnic minority households to produce reliable findings, the data is taken from the English Housing Survey (EHS) 2014/15 and 2015/16, combined.
Information about households available from the EHS Headline and Annual Reports is normally based on a single year of the survey, so some of the statistics used here may not match those in the Headline and Annual Reports.
The commentary has focused on findings based on at least 30 households to ensure that we report reliable findings. For this reason, information is not provided about households from Gypsy, Traveller or Irish Traveller, White and Black Caribbean, White and Black African, Other Mixed, Other Black or Arab ethnic backgrounds.
It is not possible to look in detail into the financial help owner occupiers got from their family when they bought their home. This is because the sample sizes of individual ethnic groups when further broken down by other characteristics, such as income, socio-economic group, region or age are not large enough to give reliable estimates.
The EHS is a ‘sample survey’: it collects information from a random sample of the population to make generalisations (reach 'findings’) about the total population.
For example, EHS findings might include the percentage of households who get help from their family to buy their own home.
The commentary for this data only includes reliable, or ‘statistically significant’, findings.
Findings are statistically significant when we can be confident that they are reflective of the total population rather than just the survey sample.
What the data measures
This data measures the differences by ethnicity in financial help given by family members to buy a home.
‘Financial help’ includes any gift or loan from family members which is used to pay all or part of the cost of buying a home.
The figures come from the English Housing Survey (EHS) 2014/15 and 2015/16. The survey involves face-to-face interviews with about 13,300 randomly selected households every year. These are used to make estimates for the 22.6 million households in England as a whole.
The EHS is a national survey of people's housing circumstances and the condition and energy efficiency of homes in England.
The information relates to households. A household is one person or a group of people (not necessarily related) who have the accommodation as their only or main residence. If it is a group, they must share cooking facilities and also share a living room, sitting room or dining area.
The EHS has ethnicity information on the household reference person as well as all other members of the household. The ‘household reference person’ is the person in whose name the accommodation is owned or rented, or who is otherwise responsible for it.
Some households have people from different ethnic backgrounds; where this happens, we have used the ethnic background of the household reference person.
Nearly every household reference person – more than 99.8% interviewed – provided information on their ethnicity.
The ethnic categories used in this data
For comparisons made at national level (England), this data uses the standardised ethnic groups based on the 2011 census.
White:
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English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish/British
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Irish
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Gypsy, Traveller or Irish Traveller
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Any other White background
Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups:
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White and Black Caribbean
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White and Black African
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White and Asian
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Any other Mixed/Multiple ethnic background
Asian/Asian British:
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Indian
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Pakistani
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Bangladeshi
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Chinese
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Any other Asian background
Black/African/Caribbean/Black British:
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African
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Caribbean
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Any other Black/African/Caribbean background
Other ethnic group:
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Arab
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Any other ethnic group
2. Financial help from family members to buy a home
| Ethnicity | % | help from family to buy households | All households |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asian | |||
| Bangladeshi | 11 | 4,077 | 37,717 |
| Chinese | 11 | 5,219 | 48,537 |
| Indian | 11 | 36,553 | 329,941 |
| Pakistani | 15 | 27,035 | 185,014 |
| Asian other | 11 | 9,710 | 85,834 |
| Black | |||
| Black African | 6 | 4,804 | 75,274 |
| Black Caribbean | 5 | 5,630 | 110,634 |
| Black other | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable |
| Mixed | |||
| Mixed White/Asian | 4 | 1,967 | 44,723 |
| Mixed White/Black African | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable |
| Mixed White/Black Caribbean | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable |
| Mixed other | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable |
| White | |||
| White British | 7 | 825,331 | 12,207,546 |
| White Irish | 8 | 8,046 | 94,940 |
| White Gypsy/Traveller | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable |
| White other | 16 | 51,820 | 328,913 |
| Other | |||
| Arab | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable | withheld because a small sample size makes it unreliable |
| Any other | 8 | 5,797 | 70,392 |
Download table data for ‘Financial help from family members to buy a home’ (CSV) Source data for ‘Financial help from family members to buy a home’ (CSV)
Summary of Financial help from family to buy a home Financial help from family members to buy a home Summary
This data shows that:
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one million out of 14.3 million homeowners in England (7%) bought their current home with financial help from family members
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825,000 White British homeowners (7%) had help from family members
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a higher percentage of homeowners from Indian (11%), Pakistani (15%) or Other White (16%) backgrounds had financial help from family members; that’s 37,000, 27,000 and 52,000 homeowners, respectively
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although the survey estimates show differences between home owners who had help from family members for the remaining ethnic groups these are not reliable enough to draw any conclusions about differences between White British and these ethnic minority households in the total population
3. Methodology
Face-to-face interviews with a random sample of about 13,300 households a year.
The dwellings of about 6,000 of the interviewed households are randomly selected to take part in the physical survey element carried out by a qualified surveyor.
In addition, a random sample of around 200 of the dwellings identified by the interviewer as vacant are also included in the physical survey element.
Weighting:
Weighting is used to adjust the results of a survey to make them representative of the population.
For example, a survey which contains 25% females and 75% males will not accurately reflect the views of the general population which we know is around 50% male and 50% female.
Statisticians rebalance or ‘weight’ the survey results to more accurately represent the general population. In the EHS, weighting makes the results more representative of the 22.6 million households in England.
Suppression rules and disclosure control
Estimates based on less than 30 households have been suppressed to ensure that we report reliable findings. The data is deposited in the UK Data Archive (UKDA), after a wide range of disclosure control has been applied.
Strictly disclosure controlled data in the form of derived variables are available under the End-User Licence (e.g. ethnicity is given as white/ethnic minority).
Data sets with some more details are made available under Special Licence after the user has applied to the English Housing Survey Team for access.
Potentially disclosive data, including low-level geography variables (postcode and Lower Layer Super Output Area) are available only through the UKDA Secure Access which requires users to undergo special training, including on disclosure control, before access is given.
Rounding
Estimates in the charts and tables are given to the nearest whole number but more detailed estimates to 1 decimal place are available in the download
Quality and methodology information
4. Data sources
Source
Type of data
Survey data
Type of statistic
National Statistics
Publisher
Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities
Note on corrections or updates
Information published in the EHS headline report and other annual reports is usually based on a 12-month period, rather than the 2 years’ combined data used here. As a result, the statistics shown here may not match those in the EHS reports.
Publication frequency
Yearly
Purpose of data source
The English Housing Survey is a continuous national survey commissioned by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. It collects information about people’s housing circumstances and the condition and energy efficiency of housing in England.
5. Download the data
This file contains the following: ethnicity, year, geography, value, denominator, numerator and sample size