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Household One Year Mobility Indicator (MV1D)

This variable indicates if all, some, or none of the residents of a household have changed address in the previous year. Persons temporarily absent and visitors are excluded. This variable is applicable to all occupied private dwellings, excluding those that were determined to be 'Visitor only' or 'Other non-classifiable' households.

How this variable is created

This variable is derived from the questions asking for a person's place of usual residence on Census night and one year ago. From this data it is possible to identify the change of address of people and show the movement of households for one year prior to the Census date. The dwelling can then be coded as having all, some, or no residents in the household having a different address one year ago. Images of the questions are provided below.

Variable history

This variable on household mobility was first used for the 1991 Census. However, data about the change of addresses for individual persons - from which this variable is derived - has been collected since the 1976 Census. The reference year, and one year ago date, were updated for the 2016 Census.

Non-response rate

The majority of item non-response is attributable to households which did not respond to the Census at all. Refer to item non-response rates for more information. The second and smaller contributor to item non-response is when households return a Census form but may not answer a particular question(s). For more information, refer to Understanding Census data quality.

Item non-response rates are a measure of how many households did not respond to a particular question as a proportion of the total number of people the question was applicable to. In this instance the response is left as not stated.

The non-response rate for this variable was 6.2% in 2016 (1.9 % in 2011). For this variable, the 'non-response' includes households in which one or more residents did not state their usual residence one year ago.

Further information

A definition of Household One Year Mobility Indicator is available in the 2016 Census Dictionary (cat. no. 2901.0).
For more information related to Household One Year Mobility Indicator, see data quality statements for Usual Address Indicator Census Night and Usual Address One Year Ago Indicator.
Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) was used for the 2016 Census. Provision was also made for persons who indicated that they had no usual place of residence one year ago.

Household form question image

Questions 8 and 9 as they appear on the 2016 Census Household Paper Form:



A text only version of the online Census Household form is available from the Downloads tab.