Average Filipino household size shrinks to 4.6 members

From 2000 to 2010, the household population in the Philippine has recorded an increase of 15.8 million persons, or 20.7 percent, according to the results of the 2010 Census of Population and Housing conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO). However, household size has somewhat contracted with an average 4.6 members from 5.0 persons per household in 2000.

The data showed that as of May 2010, the Philippines recorded a household population of 92,097,978 persons from 76.3 million persons in the year 2000.

“Household population refers to all persons who are members of the household,” NSO explained.

Among the regions, the NSO data said that Region IV-A (Calabarzon) had the biggest share of the country’s household population with 12.6 million persons) in 2010.

Metro Manila followed at second with 11.8 million persons, while Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) recorded the least household population with only 1.6 million persons.

In terms of the increase in household population size from 2000 to 2010, the NSO data added that Calabarzon recorded the highest increase of 35.3 percent over the household population in 2000 with 9.3 million persons.

This was followed by Region XII (Soccsksargen) with an increase of 27.6 percent, and by Region III (Central Lu-zon) with 23.5-percent increase.

The lowest increase in household population size was observed in Region I, which recorded an increase of 13.0 percent.

The data also said that the number of households for the entire Philippines in 2010 reached 20.2 million, an increase of 32.0 percent compared to the number of households of 15.3 million in 2000.

“Household is a social unit consisting of a person or a group of persons who sleep in the same housing unit and have common arrangements in the preparation and consumption of food,” the NSO said.

Calabarzon, with 2.83 million was also the region with the highest number of households, while Metro Manila and Central Luzon followed with 2.76 million and 2.24 million, respectively.

Meanwhile, CAR has the least number of households with 352,403 households in 2010 and 263,851 households in 2000.

The NSO data revealed that there is a 32.0-percent increase in the number of households, which is larger than the 20.7-percent increase in the household population in 2010.

This resulted in a lower average hou-sehold size of 4.6 persons compared to an average of 5.0 persons per household in 2000 and 5.3 persons per household in 1990 for the entire country.

“Average household size is the average number of persons who live in the household, computed as the household population in a given area divided by the corresponding total number of households in that area,” the statistics agency noted.

In addition, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao had the highest average household size of 6.0 persons.

NSO said that the other regions with average household sizes higher than the national figure were: Region 5 (Bicol) with 4.9 persons; Region 13 (Caraga) with 4.8 persons; and Regions 8 (Eastern Visayas), 9 (Zamboanga Peninsula), and 11 (Davao), with 4.7 persons each, while Metro Manila had the lowest average household size of 4.3 persons. –MAYVELIN U. CARABALLO REPORTER, Manila Times