Deprived People or Deprived Places? Exploring the Ecological Fallacy in Studies of Deprivation with the Samples of Anonymised Records

Abstract

In recent years have seen an increase in the analysis of deprivation in Britain. In most studies the unit of analysis has been geographical, such as local-government wards or districts. This reflects, in part, a reliance on small-area statistics and local-base statistics from the censuses of population. Although useful in identifying specific problem areas, this type of approach may be subject to ecological fallacy. In other words, areas of high levels of deprivation may be home to high proportions of particular social or demographic groups, but it cannot be automatically assumed that these groups are themselves deprived. Although some studies have been based on purpose-designed individual-level survey data, these often lack sufficient sample sizes to analyse effectively small subgroups of the population or to allow geographical disaggregation. The release of the Samples of Anonymised Records from the 1991 Census allows individual-level data to be used to investigate the social, demographic, and geographical dimensions of deprivation. In this paper, a threshold of deprivation will be determined and the distribution of individual-level deprivation (deprived people) will be compared with an equivalent area-level index constructed from standard census output by the use of conventional techniques.