Abstract
Whilst the UK is planned to have a census in 2021, it may well be the last and there is official acknowledgement that the country’s statistical system should be enhanced by greater use of administrative data. Thus, there is a pressing need to understand whether alternative data sources are fit for social science purposes. This study assesses the potential of utilizing administrative statistics for investigating the relationships between health and socioeconomic distributions for small areas; a type of study regularly carried out using census data. Pairs of administrative measures of health and deprivation indicator variables are compared with census equivalents for lower super output area geographies in England in 2001. The administrative datasets are then used to derive health measures and deprivation indexes for the time points 2001, 2006 and 2010. Inequalities in health are then analysed using administrative data derived area measures with health found to be poorer in areas with socioeconomic disadvantage. Overall, the administrative datasets used here reveal very similar patterns of health and deprivation to the decennial census suggesting they are viable alternatives and have great potential to enhance the country’s statistical system given their availability outside census years.
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Acknowledgments
This work used Census data obtained via MIMAS’ CASWEB and GIS boundary data obtained via EDINA’s UKBORDERS; services supported by ESRC and JISC. These data are Crown copyright and are reproduced with permission of OPSI. Adapted data from the Office for National Statistics and obtained via the Neighbourhood Statistics and NOMIS websites licensed under the Open Government Licence v.2.0 are also used. All data are subject to Crown Copyright. We are grateful for the feedback from the review process which has helped to improve this paper.
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Ajebon, M.O., Norman, P. Beyond the census: a spatial analysis of health and deprivation in England. GeoJournal 81, 395–410 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-015-9624-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-015-9624-8