Definition: Current activity of parents

Demography

Each type of family nucleus is broken down to show different combinations of current activity for each of the parents.  It should be noted that a "parent" is not necessarily a biological parent, but an adult of the family nucleus including the child (for example, the partner of his biological mother).

Current activity status is the current relationship of a person to economic activity, based on a brief reference period such as one week or one day.  The use of the "current activity" is considered most appropriate for countries where the economic activity of people is not influenced much by seasonal or other factors causing variations over the year, and it is recommended that countries in the ECE region collect information in the census on activity status based on this concept (i.e. the "labour force" concept).  A time-reference period of one week should preferably be used, which may be either a specified recent fixed calendar week or the last seven days prior to enumeration.