Australian Bureau of Statistics
Celebrating the International Year of Statistics 2013

COUPLE FAMILIES

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COUPLE FAMILIES

As noted in What is a Family?, couple families are based around a couple relationship between two people who are either married or in a de facto partnership. and includes couples with or without children or dependants, gay partners and other variations.

In June 2011, there were:

• 2.3 million opposite-sex couple families with dependants
• 3 million opposite-sex couple families without dependants
• 33 thousand same-sex couple families

COUPLE FAMILIES WITH DEPENDANTS

The proportion of couple families with dependants in which one or both partners were employed was 94% in June 2011

The father was employed in 90% of all opposite-sex couples with dependants. In 93% of these cases, the father was employed full-time.

The mother was employed in 67% of opposite-sex couple families with dependants. The proportion where the mother was employed full-time has remained steady at 28%. This proportion increases with the age of the youngest dependant, from 18% for mothers of 0–4 year olds to 42% of mothers of young people aged 15–24.





COUPLE FAMILIES WITHOUT DEPENDANTS

In June 2011, 57% of couple families had no dependants.

Both partners were 45 or older in 71% of couple families without dependants. Of those, 58% were families where at least one partner was employed.

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