Canadian Classification of Institutional Units and Sectors (CCIUS) 2012

• S1 - Total economy

S14 - Households

This sector consists of all resident households. For the purposes of the SNA, a household is defined as a group of persons who share the same living accommodation, who pool some or all of their income and wealth and who consume certain types of goods and services collectively, mainly housing and food. In general, each member of a household should have some claim upon the collective resources of the household. At least some decisions affecting consumption or other economic activities must be taken for the household as a whole. Households often coincide with families, but members of the same household do not necessarily have to belong to the same family so long as there is some sharing of resources and consumption.
Domestic staff that live on the same premises as their employer do not form part of their employer's household even though they may be provided with accommodation and meals as remuneration in kind. Paid domestic employees have no claim upon the collective resources of their employers' households and the accommodation and food they consume are not included with their employer's consumption. They should therefore be treated as belonging to households separate from those of their employers.
Persons living permanently in an institution, or who may be expected to reside in an institution for a very long or indefinite period of time are treated as belonging to a single institutional household when they have little or no autonomy of action or decision in economic matters. Some examples of persons belonging to institutional households are members of religious orders living in monasteries, convents or similar institutions; long-term patients in hospitals, including mental hospitals; prisoners serving long sentences; and persons living permanently in retirement homes.
On the other hand, persons who enter hospitals, clinics, convalescent homes, religious retreats, or similar institutions for short periods, who attend residential schools, colleges or universities, or who serve short prison sentences should be treated as members of the individual households to which they normally belong.
The residence of individual persons is determined by that of the household of which they form part and not by their place of work. All members of the same household have the same residence as the household itself, even though they may cross borders to work or otherwise spend periods of time abroad. If they work and reside abroad so long that they acquire a centre of economic interest abroad, they cease to be members of their original households.
Household unincorporated market enterprises are created for the purpose of producing goods or services for sale or barter on the market. They can be engaged in virtually any kind of productive activity: agriculture, mining, manufacturing, construction, retail distribution or the production of other kinds of services. They can range from single persons working as street traders or shoe cleaners with virtually no capital or premises of their own through to large manufacturing, construction or service enterprises with many employees.
Household unincorporated market enterprises also include unincorporated partnerships that are engaged in producing goods or services for sale or barter on the market. The partners may belong to different households. When the liability of the partners for the debts of the enterprises is unlimited, the partnerships must be treated as unincorporated enterprises and remain within the households sector since all the assets of the household, including the dwelling itself, are at risk if the enterprise goes bankrupt.
Using an income-based household sub sectoring method, households in the CSNA are grouped into subsectors according to the nature of their largest source of income or type of household income, as follows:
a. Income accruing to the owners of household unincorporated enterprises with paid employees (employers' mixed income);
b. Incomes accruing to the owners of householdunincorporated enterprises without paid employees (own-account workers' mixed income);
c. Compensation received from employment, referred to as Compensation of employees;
d. Property and transfer incomes.
The households are allocated to subsectors according to which of the four categories of income listed above is the largest for the household as a whole, even if it does not always account for more than half of total household income. When more than one income of a given category is received within the same household, for example, because more than one member of the household earns compensation of employees or because more than one property or transfer income is received, the classification should be based on the total household income within each category. Mixed income represents the surplus or deficit accruing from production by unincorporated enterprises owned by households; it implicitly contains an element of remuneration for work done by the owner, or other members of the household, that cannot be separately identified from the return to the owner as entrepreneur but it excludes the operating surplus coming from owner-occupied dwellings.
The four subsectors are Employers, Own-account workers, Employees, and Recipients of Property and transfer income. The fourth subsector, Recipients of property and transfer income, constitutes a heterogeneous group and therefore is further divided into three major groups. These are, Recipients of property incomes, Recipients of pensions, and Recipients of other transfer incomes.