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SCOTTISH INDEX OF MULTIPLE DEPRIVATION 2004: SUMMARY TECHNICAL REPORT
Chapter 1: Background
The report from the Scottish Centre for Research on Social Justice called ' Measuring Deprivation in Scotland : Developing a Long-Term Strategy' 4set out a wide range of recommendations for the short, medium and long term measurement of deprivation. The Executive welcomed the report as a sound basis for developing its strategy and accepted all recommendations.
The Executive agreed that it would produce an area-based measure, building on the SID 2003. This 2004 SIMD would therefore identify the most deprived areas across Scotland and would make use of the most up to date information. Where possible these would represent 2002 or would be taken from the 2001 Scottish Census of Population. The SIMD 2004 would also make use of a new statistical geography called Data Zones and the Executive would work to ensure that data would be available to update the SIMD 2004 in late 2006 and on a three year basis thereafter.
The data for the SIMD 2004 has been sourced from a range of administrative systems and the Scottish Census of Population.
The SIMD 2004 is made up of 6 individual domains. The reasons for their inclusion are as follows :
Current Income domain - indirect measure of a major part of the main cause of deprivation.
Employment domain - direct measure of exclusion from the world of work.
Housing domain - direct measure of material living standards.
Health domain - indirect measure of both causes and consequences of deprivation.
Education, Skills and Training domain - indirect measure of both causes and consequences of deprivation.
Geographic Access and Telecommunications domain - direct measure of area characteristics that impact on deprived individuals.
The SIMD 2004 is a weighted combination of these domains. Across the 6 domains, there are 31 indicators which are used to describe various aspects of deprivation. Taken in total they provide a comprehensive picture of deprivation within each Data Zone across Scotland, measuring both individual and area characteristics.
The most significant advance made in the construction of the SIMD 2004 has been the move to the small area geographic unit (Data Zone) as the area of analysis. In previous indices there has been a compromise between size of geography and how up to date the data are. Typically this has been either larger geographies (wards or postcode sectors) and more data from non-Census sources, or smaller geographies and more Census data. The SIMD 2004 and future indices will bring together a small geographic unit and increasing amounts of non-Census data.
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