What is the adult-equivalent household size?

Answer 1

It's an aggregate indicator for a household size. It's used mostly in analyses of household attributes as a substitute for the straightforward household size or simply the number of adults in a household since both these can give inaccurate indications.

The OECD approach is using weights that count as 1.0 for the first adult, 0.7 for the second and subsequent adults, and 0.5 for each child under 15. The modified OECD or EU approach is using 1.0 for the first adult, 0.5 for the second and subsequent and 0.3 for each child. There are more elaborate weights in use however from national governements, but as long as the above weights are used uniformly inside a sample, they can be legitimate substitutes of the simpler head-counting or adult-counting.