Spatial dimensions of child social exclusion risk: widening the scope

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Spatial dimensions of child social exclusion
risk widening the scope
Annie Abello, Cathy Gong, Justine McNamara and
Anne Daly
Paper presented at the 11th Australian Institute
of Family Studies Conference, Melbourne, July
7-9th 2010
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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 NATSEMs 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/disadva
  ntage (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 childrens
  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 v v
Socio-economic In bottom income quintile v v
Socio-economic No family member completing year 12 v v
Socio-economic Highest occupation of family members v
Socio-economic No parent working v v
Engagement No internet at home v v
Engagement No parent volunteering v v
Engagement No motor vehicle v v
Housing Public housing v
Housing High renting cost v
Health services disability Ratio of GPs v
Health services disability Ratio of dentists v
Health services disability Children with disability v
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)
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Loadings for domains
Original variables Socio-economic Engagement Health services disability
Single parent family 0.80    
In bottom income quintile 0.91
No family member completing year 12 0.88
No parent working 0.91    
No internet at home   0.92  
No parent volunteering 0.58
No motor vehicle   0.95  
Ratio of GPs 0.89
Ratio of dentists 0.89
Children with disability     -0.24
Note Loading is the correlation between the first component and original variables Note Loading is the correlation between the first component and original variables Note Loading is the correlation between the first component and original variables 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
Original version of index
Revised version of index
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Areas with most and least social exclusion risk,
old and new version

• 50 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 Unit Capital cities Balance of Australia
Single parent family of children of children 18.2 21.6
No family member completing year 12 No family member completing year 12 of children 16.5 25.3
No parent working of children of children 14.9 17.6
In bottom income quintile of children of children 17.1 22.1
No internet at home of children of children 17.5 23.9
No motor vehicle of children of children 3.7 4.7
No parent volunteering of children of children 68.3 62.0
High renting cost of children of children 8.7 9.1
Children with disability of children of children 1.6 1.8
Ratio of GPs Per 1000 persons Per 1000 persons 1.91 1.35
Ratio of dentists Per 1000 persons Per 1000 persons 0.52 0.30
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Characteristics for areas with greatest and least
risk (n50)
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

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