National statistics

Indices of Deprivation 2019: income and employment domains combined for England and Wales - guidance note

Published 10 December 2020

Applies to England and Wales

This National Statistics output provides data on income and employment deprivation rates for small areas across England and Wales, as at 2015-16. They are different and supplementary to the separate official measures of relative deprivation within England and Wales. These datasets provide a directly measured indicator of income and employment deprivation, enabling comparable analysis across the two countries.

1. Background / more detail

These statistics form supplementary outputs to the English indices of deprivation 2019 (IoD219) and the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019 (WIMD). They provide consistent data on income and employment deprivation for small areas across both England and Wales, measured as at 2015-16.

Because of this reference period, note that any impact on relative deprivation levels because of the coronavirus pandemic will not be seen in the data. However, these statistics may be useful in understanding communities that were most vulnerable before the pandemic.

Both datasets may be useful for those interested specifically in pan-England and Wales measures of local area deprivation.

There are several differences between the Indices published for England and Wales separately. A significant difference is that both contain a different number of domains - 8 for Wales, 7 for England. However, two of these domains are closely aligned and are covered in this supplementary output.

The data match the inputs to the English Index of Deprivation, and are closely aligned to the inputs for the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (see Methods section below for full details). Since these datasets only cover two domains present across both the English and Welsh indices, this supplementary output doesn’t capture all the aspects of multiple deprivation included in the standalone National Statistic releases.

2. What is being published?

These are National Statistics published by MHCLG in collaboration with Welsh Government. The dataset consists of an income deprivation and employment deprivation ranking for each Lower-layer Super Output Area (LSOA), or, neighbourhood, in England and Wales. The published spreadsheets include, for income and employment deprivation separately:

• scores and ranks of scores by Lower-layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs)
• in the income deprivation dataset are two subset indices: the Income Deprivation Affecting Children (aged 0-15) Index (the IDACI), and the Income Deprivation Affecting Older People (aged 60+) Index (the IDAOPI). Both subsets cover each LSOA in England and Wales

The indicators are derived from counts of people receiving certain benefits, tax credits or other government support, and, for income deprivation, counts of their dependents. These are combined with population estimates to form estimated rates of those in income or employment deprivation consistently across both England and Wales.

Full details of the indicator are provided in the Methods section below.

3. Methods

Indicators

The Income Deprivation Domain measures the proportion of the population experiencing deprivation relating to low income. The definition of low income used includes both those people that are out-of-work, and those that are in work but who have low earnings (and who satisfy the respective means tests). Further details are provided in the IoD2019 technical report.

The Employment Deprivation Domain measures the proportion of the working-age population in an area involuntarily excluded from the labour market. This includes people who would like to work but are unable to do so due to unemployment, sickness or disability, or caring responsibilities. Further details are provided in the IoD2019 technical report.

The ‘Combined IMD’ worksheet in this file contains the ranks and scores for the Income and Employment domains of the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2019 (IoD 2019) at Lower-layer Super Output Area (LSOA) level across England and Wales.

The LSOA with a rank of 1 is the most deprived and the LSOA with a rank of 34,753 is the least deprived.

This dataset measures income deprivation and employment deprivation consistently across England and Wales at LSOA level using the English methodology. Using this methodology provides a consistent non-overlapping count of the population by area.

The Income Deprivation Domain measures the proportion of the population in an area experiencing deprivation relating to low income. The definition of low income used includes both those people that are out-of-work, and those that are in work but who have low earnings (and who satisfy the respective means tests).

The indicators which comprise this domain are:

• adults and children in Income Support families
• adults and children in income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance families
• adults and children in income-based Employment and Support Allowance families
• adults and children in Pension Credit (Guarantee) families
• adults and children in Universal Credit families where no adult is classed within the ‘Working - no requirements’ conditionality group
• adults and children in Working Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit families not already counted, that is those who are not in receipt of Income Support, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, income-based Employment and Support Allowance, Pension Credit (Guarantee), and whose equivalised income (excluding housing benefit) is below 60% of the median before housing costs
• asylum seekers in receipt of subsistence support, accommodation support, or both

The Employment Deprivation Domain measures the proportion of the working-age population in an area involuntarily excluded from the labour market. This includes people who would like to work but are unable to do so due to unemployment, sickness or disability, or caring responsibilities.

The indicators which comprise this domain are:

• claimants of Jobseeker’s Allowance (both contribution-based and income-based), women aged 18 to 59 and men aged 18 to 64
• claimants of Employment and Support Allowance (both contribution-based and income-based), women aged 18 to 59 and men aged 18 to 64
• claimants of Incapacity Benefit, women aged 18 to 59 and men aged 18 to 64
• claimants of Severe Disablement Allowance, women aged 18 to 59 and men aged 18 to 64
• claimants of Carer’s Allowance, women aged 18 to 59 and men aged 18 to 64
• claimants of Universal Credit in the ‘Searching for work’ and ‘No work requirements’ conditionality groups

Further details are provided in the IoD2019 technical report.

4. Comparability to English IoD and WIMD

For areas in England, the scores across both the combined income and employment domains are the same as the data used for the English Indices of Deprivation 2019 release. Ranks may differ as the coverage is now 34,753 LSOAs over England and Wales as opposed to 32,844 areas of England only.

For areas in Wales, these rates of people in income or employment deprivation are closely aligned but not exactly the same as the data used for the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation Income and Employment domains. Further details are provided below, and there is more information in the ONS’s article on Similarities and differences between the Indices of Deprivation across the UK.

For areas in Wales, the key differences for the combined England and Wales domains published here compared to data used for WIMD 2019 are outlined below. The overall impact of these differences on the relative position of small areas within Wales is small, across both domains.

For both income and employment deprivation:

• The reference period is a year earlier. Data as at 2015-16 (specifically August 2015) has been used as this pre-dated the rollout of full Universal Credit (UC) service in England. For WIMD 2019, a later reference period of 2016-17 was used, which reflects the later rollout of UC in Wales, compared to England.
• Shrinkage has been applied to data. Scores are produced following the English IoD approach of applying a statistical technique called shrinkage (see 2015 technical report) to deal with potential fluctuating indicator values, which was not used for WIMD 2019.

For income deprivation:

• Non-claiming partners of claimants have been included in numerators. This was not the case for WIMD 2019 data, where non-claiming partners of income-related benefit or tax credit claimants were not included in the numerator (although any dependent children of claimants were).
• The removal of claimants claiming both benefits from DWP and tax credits from HMRC, to avoid double counting. This was not done for WIMD 2019.

For employment deprivation:

• Carer’s Allowance is included in the list of benefits covered for the combined domain, unlike the WIMD 2019 Employment domain. This means that absolute rates of employment deprivation for small areas in Wales are a little higher according to the combined dataset compared to WIMD 2019.

5. Enquiries

For statistical enquiries on the IoD2019 please contact:
indices.deprivation@communities.gov.uk.

For statistical enquiries on the WIMD please contact:
stats.inclusion@gov.wales.