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Measuring Deprivation in Scotland: Developing a Long-Term Strategy: Final Report

6. Developing individual measures

This section considers the third element of our work - measuring deprivation at an individual rather than area level. The first part sets out the basic approach using a single standard measured through a household survey. The second part turns to the question of whether different standards might be developed to reflect the needs of different social groups in more detail. Finally, the Section examines the question of updating the measure.

6.1 Measuring individual deprivation

At present, the only feasible option for measuring deprivation at an individual level is through a household survey, as discussed in Section 3.1 above. Following the model of the PSE1999 study and its predecessors, this involves a three-stage process as the Interim Report made clear.

The first stage is concerned with determining the minimum standard used to measure deprivation - the material goods, services or social activities which everybody should be able to enjoy. It is not for this research to say what this standard should be. Rather, as Pantazis et al (2000) explain, the process of arriving at the standard involves both qualitative work to determine a "short list" of possible items and quantitative research to identify the final list of items which the majority see as "necessities". Both elements should be carried out for this exercise, although the work at the British level would provide a significant base to start from. For the quantitative element, sufficient data is needed to provide reasonable confidence levels at national level only. This might be collected through an existing survey such as the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey (with a sample of 1600 from across Scotland). Checks should be carried out to ensure that the judgements of different groups (by age, gender, class, and so on) as to what constitute "necessities" are essentially similar.

The second stage gathers data on individual living standards using a household survey. One issue is the extent to which the survey can provide detail on levels of deprivation for different parts of Scotland. In the consultations for this work, there was strong interest in being able to get estimates of deprivation down to the level of local authorities. A dedicated survey to achieve this would be extremely expensive. The more cost-effective alternative would be build relevant questions into an existing survey. The SHS seems to offer the best opportunity at present as it is designed to deliver robust estimates of population characteristics at local authority level over a two-year period by interviewing over 30,000 people in that time. Results could of course be produced annually using rolling two-year periods; annual figures were what most consultees tended to prefer. Alternatively, data could be aggregated for a larger number of years to provide more stability; the problem with this approach is that the measure is less responsive to change.

Some of the content of the SHS is already highly relevant to the study of deprivation and it would therefore be a matter of expanding on or amending those questions, not adding entirely new topics. There are existing questions on whether the household has certain material items (freezer, washing machine, telephone, or computer), on housing conditions and on social relations (frequency of contact with family and friends), for example.

In the third stage, a cut-off point is applied to determine the number of people considered to be multiply deprived. These thresholds can be seen as being somewhat arbitrary - there is not necessarily any objective reason for determining that lacking three "necessities" determines deprivation rather than two or four. The key point is that, by tracking changes over time, evidence is provided as to whether the number of people deprived on a given threshold is increasing, decreasing or remaining the same. As with statistics on low incomes, it would make sense to use a number of different thresholds rather than relying on one single threshold.

The PSE1999 argued that children have significantly different needs from adults and that these should be reflected through the use of a separate standard to measure child deprivation. There was strong support for this approach to be adopted in Scotland. Separate research would need to be conducted to identify the list of "child necessities". There were strong representations that any such research should be child-centred, i.e. based on the views and experiences of children. Data would also need to be collected through the SHS on living standards of children. At present, data on one child in each household is collected from the highest-income householder or their partner rather than from the child themselves. While it might be preferable to have the child's opinion of whether they lack certain "necessities" or not, there are ethical and practical barriers to interviewing children directly, particularly younger children. These include problems of getting open answers from children in the presence of their parent or guardian. One way round this problem might be to obtain parental or guardian consent to older children completing a written questionnaire.

The use of a single standard for measuring deprivation for all adults is particularly valuable because it enables comparisons to be made between social groups in terms of levels of deprivation. Indeed, there was strong support from the consultation process for disaggregating national statistics to make comparisons between different social groups. This is not to deny that there may be variations in needs or life styles between groups to some extent but the argument is that there is sufficient commonality to make a single standard broadly applicable.

Information already collected in the SHS would make it possible to disaggregate results by:

• age;
• gender;
• ethnicity;
• household types;
• other factors such as health, employment status and so on.

There is some information on disability available from the survey although this could be further developed. Ideally, it would also be possible to disaggregate results by sexual orientation but there are problems in collecting this information in large scale surveys due to fears of persecution and discrimination. Work is on-going within the Scottish Executive and elsewhere to try to find a suitable form of question which could be adopted in surveys such as the SHS.

One issue with using a household survey to collect data on individual deprivation is that incomes and standards of living are assumed to equal within the household. In practice, there is significant evidence that resources may be unequally distributed, with women most likely to lose out. In particular, women in low income households often forego their own necessities in order to ensure that their children have a better standard of living. It would be important that care is taken to identify each individual's living standards, and not rely on household averages.

Finally, it worth noting that, while this study has focussed on measuring deprivation, additional questions could be built into the SHS to give a more rounded picture of other forms of need such as social exclusion or social injustice or other problems such as views on the area in which they live. It would also be possible to "attach" data on area characteristics (crime incidence rates, access to services, for example) to individual records to explore relationships between individual and area-level factors.

6.2 Measures for different social groups

A further aim of this work is to explore whether it might be useful and feasible to develop a range of measures to assess the levels of deprivation for different social groups. In losing the ability to make comparisons between groups, the main gain would be a better assessment of absolute levels of need for each group and of how the deprived members of each group were distributed across Scotland.

In general, there was limited response to this question in the consultation process, perhaps because it was difficult for people to comment without having seen the details of the single standard. There was support for developing measures specific to the needs of some groups but, with the exception of children, little clear evidence was presented to argue that the needs of one particular group would not be captured by the single standard.

As a result, our recommendation is to proceed more slowly in this regard. The first priority is to put in place a single standard for adults and a separate standard for children, and to ensure that the adult measure can be disaggregated to show differences between groups. Once these measures are in place, there should be further consultations on the desirability of separate measures.

6.3 Updating the individual measure

For the individual measure, the key issue is how to cope with changes in social perceptions of what constitute "necessities". Gordon, Pantazis and Townsend (2000) show that, in general, standards defined by consensus have risen over time, reflecting rising levels of affluence and expectations. They use current judgements of "necessities" in their work, giving a truly relative approach to measuring deprivation.

With a move to produce data on possibly an annual cycle, however, it would be unhelpful to update the standard every year as this would make comparisons of changes over time less transparent. It would also add to costs for relatively little return as standards are unlikely to change rapidly. As a compromise, we recommend that the same standard should be used for a number of years and then revised to reflect changes in social perceptions. If possible, both old and new standards should be used in the changeover year. As there is likely to be very substantial overlap between old and new standards, this should be straightforward to achieve. Maintaining a standard for several years gives a less truly relative approach to measuring deprivation. It would be similar in effect to a measure of poverty which used the same (absolute) level of income to track changes over time. We would recommend that the standard be updated at least every five years, however, so that it is not allowed to drift too far from current perceptions.

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