The Households Research Database (HRD) is a leading centre for access to unit record data files from household surveys such as time use, household expenditure and income. Analysis of cross sectional household surveys allows researchers to explore many issues ranging from the equity and efficiency of taxation reform, provision of government benefits for child care and the inclusion of unpaid labour in the national accounts. Cross sectional surveys are the obvious databases for research that evaluates equity related economic and welfare policies.

The HRD is the collaborative enterprise of four Australian universities. The University of Melbourne (Households Research Unit, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research), the University of Newcastle (Department of Sociology and Anthropology), University of New South Wales (Social Policy Research Centre) and Victoria University of Technology (Centre for Strategic Economic Studies) founded the HRD facility in 1998.