The Changing Geography of Deprivation in Great Britain: Exploiting Small Area Census Data, 1971 to 2011

A major use of census data has been the development of measures of small area deprivation. These measures comprise a number of indicator variables, each of which is thought to provide information on some aspect of deprivation, into a single figure deprivation score. Deprivation indices have had widespread use in public health, local government and academic research. In a variety of settings, we might be interested in knowing whether area deprivation has changed over time including whether a regeneration scheme has had the desired effect or whether health inequalities are increasing or decreasing. However, deprivation schemes are invariably cross-sectional and various census aspects mean that determining change over time is challenging. Nevertheless, methods to address these issues exist along with a recent literature on measuring change in area characteristics over time. This chapter will first give examples of census based deprivation schemes and their usage. Then the chapter will detail the methods used to measure change in area deprivation over time. This is followed by a description of the geographies of change during the five censuses 1971 to 2011 in several case study locations. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the future of deprivation measures with respect to the 2021 Census and the use of administrative data as inputs to deprivation indices