Spatial dimensions of child social exclusion risk: widening the scope

Paper presented at the 11th Australian Institute of Family Studies Conference, Melbourne, July 7-9th 2010

Annie Abello, Cathy Gong, Justine McNamara and Anne Daly

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Acknowledgements

● This paper was funded by ARC Discovery Grant DP1094318: Towards an enhanced understanding of child and youth social exclusion risk at a small area level in Australia

The authors would like to thank the other Chief Investigators and Partner Investigators on the grant – Prof Laurie Brown, Dr Asher Ben-Arieh, Professor Michael Noble and Ms Leanne Johnson, as well as Ann Harding and Robert Tanton from NATSEM and staff of the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics.

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Background

● Earlier ARC-funded research into child social exclusion

● Development of NATSEM’s original Child Social Exclusion (CSE) Index

● Work under new grant (2010 – 2012):

- Further development and refinement of CSE Index

- Creation of an index of youth social exclusion risk

- More analysis

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Refining the index

● Re-examination of conceptual and measurement frameworks

● Investigation of new sources of data/variables

● Re-visiting methodology (first version used Principal Components Analysis to create index – similar to SEIFA indexes; this version we are creating domains, using PCA within domains and then equal weighting to combine domains)

● Comparing results

● Work still ongoing

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Conceptualising social inclusion/exclusion

Very large literature on conceptualising and measuring social exclusion, and much debate.

Issues include:

- Differences between social exclusion and poverty

- Individual/structural

- Relational aspects

- Normative judgements

- Overlap of risk/causal factors with outcomes

- How important is persistence

- Wide and deep exclusion

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Social exclusion and children

● Levitas et al. (2007)UK work on matrix of social exclusion measures which can be applied to different age groups

● UK social exclusion and poverty audit indicators for children (Opportunity for All)

● SPRC Australian work on social exclusion measures related to children

● Small but increasing number of international small area indicators of child deprivation/disadvantage (eg UK, South Africa)

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Some additional conceptual and measurement issues

● Data availability, especially for some concepts/dimensions

● The role (and availability) of data on children’s subjective well-being

● Importance of policy relevance

● Composite index vs individual variables

● Use of domains

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Domains and variables used for original and revised NATSEM CSE index

Domains Variables Original CSE index Revised CSE index

Socio-economic Single parent family √ √

In bottom income quintile √ √

No family member completing year 12 √ √

Highest occupation of family members √ ×

No parent working √ √

Engagement No internet at home √ √

No parent volunteering √ √

No motor vehicle √ √

Housing Public housing √ ×

High renting cost × √

Health services & disability

Ratio of GPs × √

Ratio of dentists × √

Children with disability × √

Data source: ABS Census 2006. We also intend to include some administrative data, such as crime, education outcome, environment and transport data if they are available for small area.

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Refinements to methodology

● Principal Components Analysis (PCA)

(1) To transform a set of correlated data into a smaller set of uncorrelated

components.

(2) PCA is used for all variables to estimate original NATSEM CSE index,

but used for variables within each domain to estimate the revised CSE

index.

● Equal weighting: for the revised CSE index only, we take the mean of

each of 4 domains using equal weights, after exponential transformation

of the index for each domain.

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Statistics of main variables, Australia, 2006

Variable Unit Mean SD

Single parent family % of children 0.20 0.07

In bottom income quintile % of children 0.23 0.12

No family member completing year 12 % of children 0.24 0.13

No parent working % of children 0.16 0.09

No internet at home % of children 0.26 0.17

No parent volunteering % of children 0.60 0.11

No motor vehicle % of children 0.07 0.12

High renting cost % of children 0.07 0.05

Children with disability % of children 0.02 0.01

Ratio of GPs Per 1000 persons 1.71

Ratio of dentists Per 1000 persons 0.44

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Correlation matrix of main variables

Variables Single parent

Low income

No year 12 No parent working

No internet

No volunteer

No motor vehicle

High renting cost

Ratio of GPs

Ratio of dentists

With disability

Single parent 1.00 0.59 0.51 0.72 0.61 0.47 0.54 0.47 -0.09 -0.07 0.12

Low income   1.00 0.83 0.74 0.87 0.19 0.73 -0.06 0.32 0.37 -0.06

No year 12     1.00 0.71 0.84 0.21 0.64 -0.19 0.39 0.47 -0.01

No parent working

      1.00 0.64 0.43 0.53 0.23 0.05 0.13 0.12

No internet         1.00 0.29 0.88 -0.18 0.32 0.35 -0.18

No volunteer   1.00 0.37 0.43 -0.20 -0.31 0.03

No motor vehicle

            1.00 -0.14 0.18 0.17 -0.28

High renting cost

      1.00 -0.39 -0.44 0.23

Ratio of GPs                 1.00 0.63 -0.08

Ratio of dentists   1.00 -0.09

With disability                     1

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Scree plot of domains (To test PCA)

0.00

0.50

1.00

1.50

2.00

2.50

3.00

3.50

Component v1 Component v2 Component v3 Component v4

Eige

nval

ue

Socio-economics

Engagement

Health service & disability

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Loadings for domainsOriginal variables Socio-economic Engagement Health services &

disability

Single parent family0.80

   

In bottom income quintile0.91

No family member completing year 12 0.88

No parent working0.91

   

No internet at home  0.92

 

No parent volunteering0.58

No motor vehicle  0.95

 

Ratio of GPs0.89

Ratio of dentists0.89

Children with disability    -0.24

Note: Loading is the correlation between the first component and original variables

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Proportion of children by CSE quintile by capital cities/balance of Australia

15.5

23.319.4

28.8

13.121.3

28.0

14.6

4.7

31.5

05

101520253035

Mostexcluded

20%

Quintile 2 Quintile 3 Quintile 4 Leastexcluded

20%

2006 Child Social Exclusion (CSE) quintile children 0-15 years (old)

% of

child

ren

Capital City Balance of state

14.5

29.0

19.422.4

14.7

29.9

4.0

16.6

28.1

21.5

05

101520253035

Mostexcluded

20%

Quintile 2 Quintile 3 Quintile 4 Leastexcluded

20%

2006 Child Social Exclusion (CSE) quintile children 0-15 years (new)

% of

child

ren

Capital City Balance of state

Original version of index Revised version of index

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Areas with most and least social exclusion risk, old and new version50 areas with greatest risk:

- In both old and new versions, 98% in non-capital city areas

- 70% of greatest risk small areas in new version were also in this group in old version

50 areas with least risk:

- In both old and new versions, 94% in capital city areas

- 72% of least risk small areas in new version were also in this group in old version

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Correlations between CSE index (new version) for children aged 0 to 15, 0-4 and 5-15, 2006

Correlation CSE quintile for children 0-15

CSE quintile for children 0-4

CSE quintile for children 5-15

CSE quintile for children 0-15 1.00 0.86 0.96

CSE quintile for children 0-4 1.00 0.82

CSE quintile for children 5-15     1.00

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Social exclusion characteristics by capital city/balance of Australia

Variables Unit Capital cities

Balance of Australia

Single parent family % of children 18.2 21.6

No family member completing year 12 % of children 16.5 25.3

No parent working % of children 14.9 17.6

In bottom income quintile % of children 17.1 22.1

No internet at home % of children 17.5 23.9

No motor vehicle % of children 3.7 4.7

No parent volunteering % of children 68.3 62.0

High renting cost % of children 8.7 9.1

Children with disability % of children 1.6 1.8

Ratio of GPs Per 1000 persons 1.91 1.35

Ratio of dentists Per 1000 persons 0.52 0.30

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Characteristics for areas with greatest and least risk (n=50)

Mean Unit 50 small areas with

highest risk

50 small areas with least risk

Single parent family % of children 38.7 10.3

No family member completed Yr 12 % of children 50.1 4.8

No parent working % of children 37.9 6.8

No internet at home % of children 65.6 6.1

No motor vehicle % of children 37.3 1.2

No parent volunteering % of children 76.8 57.3

Bottom income quintile % of children 50.0 6.9

High renting cost % of children 11.9 3.9

Children with disability % of children 1.7 1.2

GP to 1000 population Per 1000 persons 1.6 2.4

Dentist to 1000 population Per 1000 persons 0.2 0.7

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Future work

● Additional variables, especially for domains currently not covered/poorly covered (e.g. physical environment; crime and safety; education outcomes)

● Continue to trial index creation techniques

● Map and further analyse results

● Youth index

www.natsem.canberra.edu.au