MACAO, April 14 (Xinhua) -- Macao's household number increased 5.6 percent from five years ago to over 0.19 million, but with smaller household size and more elderly households, the special administrative region's statistic service said in a demographic survey on Sunday.

The Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) released the latest results of the Household Budget Survey which is conducted every five years. The survey results showed that there were 191,273 households in Macao in the survey year of 2017/2018, an increase of 10,199 or 5.6 percent compared with 2012/2013.

Analyzed by type of dwellings, the number of households living in economic housing (23,109) and social housing (12,637) rose 22.4 percent and 96.2 percent respectively, as more households resided in the several new public housing estates in the past five years.

Meanwhile, the number of households living in private housing edged down 0.1 percent over 2012/2013 to 155,527, with their proportion in total households falling 4.7 percentage points to 81.3 percent in 2017/2018.

In terms of household size, the average household size inched down from 3.05 persons to 3.04 persons in 2017/2018, and that of private housing, economic housing and social housing was 3.11 persons, 2.96 persons and 2.24 persons respectively. The number of one-person and two-person households went up from 68,918 in 2012/2013 to 74,559, an increase of 8.2 percent.

Moreover, the number of elderly households (all household members aged 65 or above) surged 65.8 percent to 18,223 due to the impact of the aging population.

Average employed persons per household decreased from 1.72 to 1.64. There were 29,570 households with no members engaging in economic activities, such as retirees, students and homemakers, constituting 15.5 percent of the total, up 4.1 percentage points from five years ago.