DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-7196-13
title: Family Resources Survey, 2005/06-2020/21, Households Below Average Income, 1994/95-2020/21 and Pensioners' Income, 2007/08-2020/21: Safe Room Access
title: Family Resources Survey, 2005- and Households Below Average Income, 1994-: Safe Room Access
title: FRS; HBAI, PI

description: &lt;ul&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;ul&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Safe Room Access FRS and HBAI data&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;Safe Room access datasets for the Family Resources Survey (FRS), Households Below Average Income (HBAI) and Pensioners' Income (PI) data are available in addition to the versions available under the standard End User Licence (EUL) (see &lt;a href="https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/datacatalogue/series/series?id=200017"&gt;FRS series&lt;/a&gt; and SNs 5828 and SN 8503 respectively). &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;The Safe Room access data are only available to access at the UK Data Archive's Safe Room at the University of Essex, Colchester. In order to obtain permission to use the Safe Room version, prospective users will need to fulfil requirements additional to those associated with standard EUL datasets, starting with the completion of an extra application form to demonstrate to the data owners exactly why they need access to the extra, more detailed variables. Safe Room access users must also complete face-to-face training and agree to the Secure Access User Agreement and Licence Compliance Policy (see 'Access' section below), and complete a Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) check. Full details of the application requirements will be provided to users when they have placed an order for access to the data, and are available from &lt;a title="Guidance on applying for the Family Resources Survey: Secure Access" href="http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/media/178323/secure_frs_application_guidance.pdf"&gt;Guidance on applying for the Family Resources Survey: Secure Access&lt;/a&gt;. Users are encouraged to download and check the EUL versions of the data prior to ordering the Safe Room access version. As the FRS is the main source of data used by the HBAI, the Safe Room access version of the HBAI data, and Pensioners' Income data, have been included with the FRS. &lt;br&gt;Further information about the FRS/HBAI/PI can be found on the &lt;a title="Family Resources Survey" href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/family-resources-survey--2"&gt;FRS&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a title="HBAI" href="http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/index.php?page=hbai"&gt;HBAI&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a title="PI" href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/pensioners-incomes-series-statistics--3"&gt;PI&lt;/a&gt; pages on the GOV.UK website.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;FRS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;The FRS aims to support the monitoring of the social security system; and support the costing and modelling of changes to state benefits. As the FRS does not track individuals over time (see &lt;em&gt;Income Dynamics&lt;/em&gt;), analysis of incomes is supplemented by the use of longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), which was subsumed into &lt;a title="Understanding Society" href="https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/datacatalogue/series/series?id=2000053"&gt;Understanding Society&lt;/a&gt; from the beginning of 2009. The Safe Room access version of the FRS contains unrounded data and variables which are not available within the standard EUL versions, including the following: &lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Household Table: HHAGEGR2, HAAGEGRP, IMD_E, IMD_W, IMD_S, IMD_NI, IMDE, IMDS, IMDW, IMDN, NIDPND, RTDRCAMT, LAC, NICOUN, LONDON, CAPVAL, BRMA, OAC, SSTRTREG, URINDS, URINDEW, GROSSCT, URB / URBNI, URBRUR, LAUA.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Benunit Table: BUAGEGRP, BUAGEGR2.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Adult Table: AGE, C2ORIGNc, CITIZEN, CITIZEN2, CORIGN, CORIGOT, MS, W1, NIREL2, DOBMONTH, DOBYEAR, AGEHQUAL, PENFLAG, POLLOPIN, RELIGENW, RELIGSC, SIDQN, TYPEED.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Child Table: C2ORIGN, CITIZEN, CITIZEN2, CORIGN, CORIGOTH, MS, DOBMONTH, DOBYEAR, TYPEED.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;p&gt;Users should note that the variables listed may not be included for all FRS years. A full list of variables can be found in the UKDA Data Dictionaries in the Documentation section, and guidance on the latest year's contents can be found in the Hierarchical Full Listing file.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;FRS 2020-21 and the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has affected the FRS 2020-21 in the following ways:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;Fieldwork operations for the FRS were rapidly changed in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the introduction of national lockdown restrictions. The established face-to-face interviewing approach employed on the FRS was suspended and replaced with telephone interviewing for the whole of the 2020-21 survey year. This change impacted both the size and composition of the achieved sample. This shift in mode of interview has been accompanied by a substantial reduction in the number of interviews achieved: just over 10,000 interviews were achieved this year, compared with 19,000 to 20,000 in a typical FRS year. It is also recognised that older, more affluent participants were over-sampled. The achieved sample was particularly small for April, and was more unbalanced across the year, with a total of 4,000 households representing the first 6 months of the survey year. While we made every effort to address additional biases identified (e.g. by altering our weighting regime), some residual bias remains. Please see the FRS 2020-21 &lt;a title="Background Information and Methodology" href="https://doc.ukdataservice.ac.uk/doc/7196/mrdoc/pdf/7196_frs_2020-21_background_information_methodology.pdf"&gt;Background Information and Methodology&lt;/a&gt; document for more information.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt; &lt;li&gt;The FRS team have published a &lt;a title="technical report" href="https://doc.ukdataservice.ac.uk/doc/7196/mrdoc/pdf/7196_frs_2020-21_technical_user_guide.pdf" style=""&gt;technical report&lt;/a&gt; for the 2020-21 survey, which provides a full assessment of the impact of the pandemic on the statistics. In line with the Statistics Code of Practice, this is designed to assist users with interpreting the data and to aid transparency over decisions and data quality issues.&lt;/li&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The FRS team are seeking users' feedback on the 2020-21 FRS. Given the breadth of groups covered by the FRS data, it has not been possible for DWP statisticians to assess or validate every breakdown which is of interest to external researchers and users. Therefore, the FRS team are inviting users to let them know of any insights you may have relating to data quality or trends when analysing these data for your area of interest. This will help the FRS team as we begin to process and quality-assure the 2021-22 dataset. Please send any feedback directly to the FRS Team Inbox: &lt;a href="mailto:team.frs@dwp.gov.uk"&gt;team.frs@dwp.gov.uk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul&gt; &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HBAI&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;The HBAI data presents information on living standards in the UK based on household income measures for the financial year. HBAI uses equivalised disposable household income as a proxy for living standards - in order to allow comparisons of the living standards of different types of households, income is adjusted to take into account variations in the size and composition of the households in a process known as equivalisation. A key assumption made in HBAI is that all individuals in the household benefit equally from the combined income of the household. This enables the total equivalised income of the household to be used as a proxy for the standard of living of each household member.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In line with international best practice, the income measures used in HBAI are subject to several statistical adjustments and, as such, are not always directly relatable to income amounts as they might be understood by people on a day-to-day basis. These adjustments, however, allow comparison of measures over time and across households of different sizes and compositions on a consistent basis. HBAI uses variants of CPI inflation when estimating how incomes are changing in real terms over time. The main source of data for the HBAI is the FRS. The Safe Room access version of the HBAI comprises unrounded data and the extra variable CTLIAB - Amount of council tax the household is liable for.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Users should note that many variables across the files do not include full variable or value labels. This information can be found easily in HBAI Harmonised Data Variables Guide in the documentation.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PI&lt;br&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;The Pensioners' Incomes (PI) series data from 2007/08 onwards is also included. The PI series carries out a few extra steps beyond the FRS and HBAI data to derive pension income variables. Unlike the standard EUL versions, the ages of the head of household and spouse have not been top-coded at 80 years in the Safe Room access version.&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Documentation&lt;br&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;The study documentation presented in the Documentation section includes data dictionaries for all years, and other documentation for the latest year of the FRS, HBAI and PI only, due to available space. Documentation for previous years is provided alongside the data for access and is also available upon request. &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Latest edition information&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;For the 12th edition (June 2022) FRS, HBA, and PI data and documentation for 2020/21 have been added to the study. For HBAI, the complete back series of data and documentation (1994/95-2019/20) has also been replaced; see the documentation for further details.&lt;/p&gt;