4.16. Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA)
URL: https://files.mdba.gov.au/asset/resources/48c5159b-9f29-4d27-ae20-baab811f7c54/re-seifa.xlsx
Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) by Local Government Area (LGA), within and outside the Murray–Darling Basin (MDB).
This data is compiled by Marsden Jacobs Associates (MJA) from publicly available Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) SEIFA releases, which are in turn derived from the ABS Census. The SEIFA is a collection of four indexes: Index of Relative Socio-economic Advantage and Disadvantage (IRSAD), Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage (IRSD), Index of Education and Occupation (IEO), Index of Economic Resources (IER). The SEIFA scores are initially calculated by the ABS at the Statistical Area Level 1 (SA1) scale.
The SEIFA scores indicate the collective socio-economic characteristics of the people living in an SA1. A low score indicates relatively greater disadvantage in the SA1, and vise versa. Scores for higher level geographic areas, such as LGA, are derived from the SA1 scores. Each index within SEIFA is constructed based on a weighted combination of selected variables, with the weights derived from a Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The IRSAD calculation includes factors such as income, education and employment. The IRSD focusses on variables that reflect disadvantage only, such as low levels of education. The IEO focuses on education attainment and employment indicators. IER focuses on income, housing and wealth. These indexes can be used to rank areas and are also useful to understand the distribution of socio-economic conditions across different areas.
The key data quality considerations are as follows:
- The SEIFA indexes are derived from ABS Census, which is subject to errors. The ABS aims to reduce respondent error, processing error, non-response and undercount errors in the Census data as much as possible, by choosing suitable census topics and questions, reviewing the responses received for errors and having processes in place to reduce and assess the non-response rates.
- The indexes are designed to compare the relative socio-economic characteristics of areas at a point in time, not to compare areas over time. The indexes are not intended for time series analysis. The ABS recommends that the index rankings and quantiles (e.g. deciles) be used for analysis, rather than using the index scores.
- Each index is constructed based on a weighted combination of selected variables. The indexes are dependent on the set of variables chosen for the analysis. A different set of underlying variables would result in a different index.
- It is also noted that the ABS quality assurance process includes checking the results to ensure that they are measuring the desired concept and that the results make intuitive sense.
The column headings in the data sheet are described in the metadata.
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