Chandigarh, 15 March 2013:– Census 2011 was conducted in two phases viz; ‘Houselisting and Housing Census’ and ‘Population Enumeration’. After the conclusion of Census of India 2011, Tables on Houses, Household Amenities and Assets available at the national, state, district, tehsil level were released and put in public domain, both in publication form as well as in electronic format. Selected tables from the above compilation pertaining to sex of the head of the household have been released for the first time in the history of Census.
Releasing the data on female headed households for Punjab, Smt Seema Jain, IAS, Joint Secretary, MHA, Government of India and Director Census, Punjab said that these tables provide an insight into the living conditions of the Female Headed Households (FHH) in the country, states/union territories and districts. FHH refers to households headed by females. There is a significant variation among states and union territories in respect of households headed by females. At the national level, there are about 270 lac female headed households constituting 10.9% of the total households. The highest percentage of FHHs are in Lakshadweep (43.7%) followed by Kerala (22.7%), Meghalaya (21.7%), Goa (20.3%) and Himachal Pradesh (18.3%). On the other hand, percentage of FHH is relatively low in Dadra & Nagar Haveli (5.0%), Rajasthan (7.0%), Bihar (7.4%), Jammu & Kashmir (7.9%) and Madhya Pradesh (8.0%), Chandigarh (9.0%) and Haryana has 9.5% and female headed households.
In Punjab, every eighth household (12.4%) is a female headed household. In absolute numbers, out of a total of 54.1 lac households in the state, 6.7 lakh are female headed and 47.4 lakh are male headed households. Among female headed households, 4.2 lac are rural and 2.5 lac urban. Among districts, it varies between 9.2% in SAS Nagar and 18.6% in Hoshiarpur.
Out of the total households in Punjab, 18.7 lac are Scheduled Caste households among which 2.2 lac households are female headed and 16.5 lac are male headed. In other words, 11.7% of the scheduled caste households in the state are female headed households; the corresponding percentages for rural and urban areas are 11.4% and 12.2% respectively.
