1351.0.55.038 - Research Paper: Socio-Economic Indexes For Areas: Robustness, Diversity Within Larger Areas and the New Geography Standard, Mar 2012  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 05/03/2012  First Issue
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Socio-economic indexes for areas (SEIFA) summarise the socio-economic advantage and disadvantage of areas using information from the Census of Population and Housing. A new set of indexes are released after each Census, with the most recent being the SEIFA 2006 indexes released in March 2008. Since the latest release, the ABS has conducted additional research to increase understanding of the indexes and to make improvements for SEIFA 2011.
This paper has three main purposes: to explore the robustness of the SEIFA indexes to the influence of specific variables and areas; to investigate ways of representing the diversity of socio-economic characteristics within larger areas; and to explore the impact of the new geography standard on the indexes. The analysis in this paper is based on 2006 Census data.
The ABS has produced a number of papers which provide more general information about SEIFA. This paper seeks to build on this discussion of SEIFA, and the reader should consider the issues in this paper in conjunction with previous ABS publications on the subject.