UK indices of multiple deprivation - a way to make comparisons across constituent countries easier

Abstract

Background Deprivation is multi-dimensional, and as such can be challenging to quantify. In the UK, each of the four constituent countries measures deprivation using their own distinct index of multiple deprivation (IMD), designed to facilitate targeting of policies within that particular country. Although these four IMD scores are not directly comparable, there are circumstances where comparison across the whole of the UK may be desirable. Methods A method of generating a UK-wide IMD score was developed using publically available data. An adjusted IMD score was generated using the employment and income domains of the individual country IMD scores, along with the coefficients and residual values from a linear regression of employment and income on the overall IMD score. Results The Scottish IMD was used as a baseline to generate an adjusted UK-wide score. The proportion of variance explained for the Scotland model was 0.972. The rank correlation coefficient (Kendall’s tau) for the association between adjusted and original IMD was 0.97, 0.98 and 0.94 for England, Northern Ireland and Wales respectively. The absolute change in Welsh and English IMD scores