DOI: 10.5255/ukda-sn-8948-2
title: Family Resources Survey, 2020-2021
title: Family Resources Survey, 1993-
title: FRS

description: &lt;p class="x_x_MsoNormal"&gt;The Family Resources Survey (FRS) has been running continuously since 1992 to meet the information needs of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). It is almost wholly funded by DWP. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="x_x_MsoNormal"&gt;The FRS collects information from a large, and representative sample of private households in the United Kingdom (prior to 2002, it covered Great Britain only). The interview year runs from April to March.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="x_x_MsoNormal"&gt;The focus of the survey is on income, and how much comes from the many possible sources (such as employee earnings, self-employed earnings or profits from businesses, and dividends; individual pensions; state benefits, including Universal Credit and the State Pension; and other sources such as savings and investments). Specific items of expenditure, such as rent or mortgage, Council Tax and water bills, are also covered.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="x_x_MsoNormal"&gt;Many other topics are covered and the dataset has a very wide range of personal characteristics, at the adult or child, family and then household levels. These include education, caring, childcare and disability. The dataset also captures material deprivation, household food security and (new for 2021/22) household food bank usage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;




&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="x_x_MsoNormal"&gt;The FRS is a national statistic whose results are published on the gov.uk website. It is also possible to create your own tables from FRS data, using DWP’s &lt;a href="https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/jsf/dataCatalogueExplorer.xhtml"&gt;Stat Xplore&lt;/a&gt; tool. Further information can be found on the gov.uk &lt;a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/family-resources-survey--2" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"&gt;Family Resources Survey&lt;/a&gt; webpage.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Secure Access FRS data&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt; In addition to the standard End User Licence (EUL) version, Secure Access datasets, containing unrounded data and additional variables, are also available for FRS from 2005/06 onwards - see SN 9256. Prospective users of the Secure Access version of the FRS will need to fulfil additional requirements beyond those associated with the EUL datasets. Full details of the application requirements 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" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"&gt;Guidance on applying for the Family Resources Survey: Secure Access&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;FRS, HBAI and PI&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/span&gt;The FRS underpins the related &lt;em&gt;Households Below Average Income &lt;/em&gt;(HBAI) dataset, which focuses on poverty in the UK, and the related &lt;em&gt;Pensioners' Incomes&lt;/em&gt; (PI) dataset. The EUL versions of HBAI and PI are held under SNs 5828 and 8503, respectively. The Secure Access versions are held under SN 7196 and 9257 (see above).&lt;br&gt;&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 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/8948/mrdoc/pdf/8948_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/8948/mrdoc/pdf/8948_frs_2020-21_technical_user_guide.pdf"&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;div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight: bold;"&gt;Latest edition information&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;For the second edition (April 2025), previously unpopulated IMD variables IMDE, IMDN, IMDS, IMDW, IMD_E, IMD_NI, IMD_S and IMD_W in the 'househol' file were replaced with new versions.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;