Summary Report - pdf - Department of Families, Housing ...

If we examine the changes in family type betweenwaves 1 and 3 (Table 15), as might be expected there ismore variability in family types in the medium term thanin the short term. The lone-parent family type is the leastlikely to persist, with more than 20 per cent of children wholived in such families in wave 1 living in couple families bywave 3. It is interesting to note that, while having anotheradult (not partner) in the household has a relatively highlikelihood of persisting over two years, the likelihood of itpersisting over three years is considerably less.Table 16 reports the average number of children in thehousehold, by age group and level of relative isolation.A typical household in the study contains 3 children lessthan 16 years of age. The families tend to be quite young.On average, there were 1.24 children per family under5 years of age, 1.14 children aged 5 to 9 years and 0.6children aged 10 years or older. The number of children inthe household tends to increase with relative isolation.About 9 per cent of families had had a new baby in thepast year. This was more prevalent among families withchildren in the B cohort and less prevalent in highly orextremely isolated areas.The children were more likely to be the only child inthe household if they were in the B cohort (18 per centas opposed to 13 per cent in K cohort), as shown inTable 17. There was, however, no discernible patternin the children’s position in the family across levels ofrelative isolation.Table 16: Number of children in household, by age group and LORILORIAge group of childrenNone (urban) Low ModerateHigh orextremeAll locations0–4 years old 1.22 1.23 1.32 1.27 1.245–9 years old 1.03 1.19 1.13 1.21 1.1410–15 years old 0.47 0.64 0.59 0.76 0.60All age groups 2.73 3.06 3.04 3.25 2.99Number of respondents 376 698 188 142 1,404Table 17: Position of study child among other children in the household, by cohort, per centPosition of childin familyCohortBaby Child Both cohortsOnly child 18.2 12.7 15.9Youngest/equal youngest 46.1 27.8 38.4Oldest/equal oldest 12.8 24.0 17.5Middle 22.9 35.5 28.2Footprints in Time: The Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children | Key Summary Report from Wave 329