Approaches to measuring disadvantage at a small area level: children and older people

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Approaches to measuring disadvantage at a small
area level children and older people
Presentation to Measuring Disadvantage and
Outcomes Based Reporting Workshop at Defining
Diversity ACTCOSS Conference, November 4 5th
2010, Canberra Justine McNamara
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Acknowledgements

• This presentation showcases work funded by ARC
  Discovery Grant DP1094318, ARC Discovery Grant
  DP664429 and ARC Linkage Grant LP775396
• Many people have contributed to the work
  presented here, including the investigators and
  funding partners on the above grants, and the
  authors of papers from which the material
  presented here has been drawn

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Overview of presentation

• Small areas
• Measuring child disadvantage child social
  exclusion risk
• Disadvantage among older people two worlds of
  ageing

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Small areas

• Increasing interest in Australia in examining
  geographical differences in advantage and
  disadvantage
• Work by Vinson and others
• To what extent was economic boom shared equally?
• Are inequalities widening?
• Neighbourhood effects
• locational disadvantage part of social
  inclusion agenda
• Place-based service planning

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Challenges in small area measurement

• To name a few
• Data, data, data
• Small sample sizes
• Choice of geographical unit
• Modifiable areal unit problem
• Ecological fallacy

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• Child social exclusion risk

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Conceptualising social inclusion/exclusion

• Very large literature on conceptualising and
  measuring social exclusion, and much debate.
• Issues include
• Differences between social exclusion and poverty
• Individual/structural
• Relational aspects
• Normative judgements
• Overlap of risk/causal factors with outcomes
• How important is persistence/intergenerational
  issues
• Wide and deep exclusion

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Social exclusion and children

• Levitas et al. (2007)UK work on matrix of social
  exclusion measures which can be applied to
  different age groups
• UK social exclusion and poverty audit indicators
  for children (Opportunity for All)
• SPRC Australian work on social exclusion measures
  related to children
• Small but increasing number of international
  small area indicators of child deprivation/disadva
  ntage (eg UK, South Africa)

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Measuring child social exclusion risk at a small
area level

• Earlier ARC-funded research into child social
  exclusion, leading to development of NATSEMs
  original Child Social Exclusion (CSE) Index
• Work under new grant (2010 2012)
• Further development and refinement of CSE Index
• Creation of an index of youth social exclusion
  risk
• More analysis
• Unit of analysis Statistical Local Area (SLA)

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Some additional conceptual and measurement issues

• Data availability, especially for some
  concepts/dimensions
• The role (and availability) of data on childrens
  subjective well-being
• Importance of policy relevance
• Composite index vs individual variables
• Use of domains

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Refining the index

• Re-examination of conceptual and measurement
  frameworks
• Investigation of new sources of data/variables
• Re-visiting methodology (first version used
  Principal Components Analysis to create index
  similar to SEIFA indexes this version we are
  creating domains, using PCA within domains and
  then equal weighting to combine domains)
• Comparing results
• WORK IN PROGRESS

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Domains and variables used for original and first
revision of NATSEM CSE index
Domains Variables Original CSE index First revision
Socio-economic Single parent family v v
Socio-economic In bottom income quintile v v
Socio-economic No family member completing year 12 v v
Socio-economic Highest occupation of family members v
Socio-economic No parent working v v
Engagement No internet at home v v
Engagement No parent volunteering v v
Engagement No motor vehicle v v
Housing Public housing v
Housing High renting cost v
Health services disability Ratio of GPs v
Health services disability Ratio of dentists v
Health services disability Children with disability v
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Additional proposed variables

• Housing
• Overcrowding
• ? adjustment to housing costs variable
• Education/development
• literacy/numeracy
• Australian Early Development Index
• Transport
• ? Forced car ownership
• ? Fuel price vulnerability
• Health
• Replace disability with an alternative measure?

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Statistics of main variables, Australia, 2006
Variable Unit Mean SD
Single parent family of children 0.20 0.07
In bottom income quintile of children 0.23 0.12
No family member completing year 12 of children 0.24 0.13
No parent working of children 0.16 0.09
No internet at home of children 0.26 0.17
No parent volunteering of children 0.60 0.11
No motor vehicle of children 0.07 0.12
High renting cost of children 0.07 0.05
Children with disability of children 0.02 0.01
Ratio of GPs Per 1000 persons 1.71
Ratio of dentists Per 1000 persons 0.44
Source ABS Census 2006 authors calculations
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Characteristics for areas with greatest and least
risk (n50)
Mean Unit 50 small areas with highest risk 50 small areas with least risk
Single parent family of children 38.7 10.3
No family member completed Yr 12 of children 50.1 4.8
No parent working of children 37.9 6.8
No internet at home of children 65.6 6.1
No motor vehicle of children 37.3 1.2
No parent volunteering of children 76.8 57.3
Bottom income quintile of children 50.0 6.9
High renting cost of children 11.9 3.9
Children with disability of children 1.7 1.2
GP to 1000 population Per 1000 persons 1.6 2.4
Dentist to 1000 population Per 1000 persons 0.2 0.7
Source ABS Census 2006 authors calculations
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• Two worlds of ageing

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Measuring disadvantage among older Australians

• Australia ranks low in OECD in terms of income
  ratios of people aged 65 to those aged 18-64
• BUT income alone not a good measure of economic
  circumstances for older Australians
• Very large differences in the distribution of
  income, wealth and home ownership
• Vulnerabilities of older renters
• Increasing interest in spatial dimensions of
  disadvantage in Australia, but little research on
  small areas and older people

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Income distribution by age group
Data source SIH 2005/06
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Tenure type by age group
Data source SIH 2005/06
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Coverage and definitions

• Aged 55 and above
• Contrast analysis narrow definitions
• Two groups (the most vs the least disadvantaged)
• relative economic advantage (national top two
  quintiles of equivalised household disposable
  income, paying no rent or mortgage, and relying
  mainly on private household income)
• deep economic disadvantage (national bottom
  income quintile, paying rent, and relying mainly
  on government income benefits)
• Unit of analysis statistical local area (SLA)
• Synthetic estimates

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Spatial Methodology Reweighting Method
turning the national household weights in the
SIH 03-04 and 05-06 file into
household weights for small areas
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• Map or 2

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Other work includes

• Interactive maps of child (available now) and
  older adult (coming soon) wellbeing and synthetic
  estimates of poverty rates and housing stress
  www.natsem.canberra.edu.au
• Measuring persistence of social exclusion among
  older Australians
• Work on particular aspects of disadvantage
  (children in households where no parent is in
  paid work child housing disadvantage income
  poverty among lone person households)
• Youth social exclusion risk

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References

• Abello, A., Gong, C., McNamara, J. and Daly, A.
  (2010) Spatial dimensions of child social
  exclusion risk widening the scope (2010).
  Presented at the 11th Institute of Family Studies
  Conference, Melbourne, 7 9 July 2010.
• Gong, C., McNamara, J. , Vidyattama, Y., Miranti,
  R., Tanton, R., Harding, A. and Kendig, H. (2009)
  Two worlds of ageing spatial microsimulation
  estimates of small area advantage and
  disadvantage among older Australians. Paper
  presented at the ARCRNSISS Methods, Tools and
  Technologies Workshop, Newcastle, 10-11 December
  2009
• Harding, A., McNamara, J., Daly, A., and Tanton,
  R., (2009), 'Child social exclusion an updated
  index from the 2006 Census', Australian Journal
  of Labour Economics, Volume 12 Number 1, 41-64
• McNamara, J., Gong, C., Miranti, R., Vidyattama,
  Y., Tanton, R, Harding, A. and Kendig, H. (2009).
  The geography of advantage and disadvantage for
  older Australians insights from spatial
  microsimulation. Paper presented at the British
  Society for Population Studies Annual Conference,
  University of Sussex, UK, September 9 - 11 2009.

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www.natsem.canberra.edu.au