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Mapping low incomes for older people in Northern Ireland

in
Publisher: 
CARDI
Author: 
Paul McGill
Date published: 
12 May, 2010
Region: 
Northern Ireland
Publication type: 
policy
Featured item on home page: 
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Three-quarters of the 100 most disadvantaged areas in Northern Ireland, as measured by income deprivation among older people (age 65+), are in the cities. However the difficulty of targeting poverty among older people is emphasised by the fact that 91% of all older people live in the rest of Northern Ireland, writes Paul McGill, CARDI.

These are among the findings of an updated set of multiple deprivation measures published for Northern Ireland by the Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency (NISRA).
Targeting Social Needs
The measures have been used to target spending under the Targeting Social Need policy, which is due to be replaced by a new anti-poverty strategy.
Commonly known as the Noble indicators after their creator, Professor Michael Noble of the University of Oxford, they were published in 2001 and last updated in 2005. Noble in turn drew on earlier measures devised by Professor Brian Robson of Manchester University in 1994. The 2005 measures remain the official ones until 26 May 2010, when NISRA will publish the final report on the revision as well as data at very small area level (output areas).
The multiple deprivation measures use 52 indicators to assess deprivation in each of 890 super output areas with an average population of 2,000 people. The indicators are grouped into seven domains with different weights in contributing to the overall measures. The domains and weights are:
  • Income (25%)
  • Employment (25%)
  • Health Deprivation and Disability (15%)
  • Education, Skills and Training (15%)
  • Proximity to Services (10%)
  • Crime and Disorder (5%)
  • Living Environment (5%)

In addition there are tables setting out scores of income deprivation affecting children and older people in each of the 890 areas, providing a detailed geographical picture of the spread of income poverty among people aged 65+. The income scores are based on seven indicators using 2008/09 administrative data.

100 most deprived areas in cities
Taking the 100 most deprived areas, 44 are in Belfast, 18 in Derry and 16 more are in the other cities of Lisburn, Newry and Armagh.
 
Nine of the ten worst areas, as measured by income deprivation among older people, are in Belfast, including two areas in Whiterock, three in the Falls and one each in New Lodge, Shankill, Crumlin and Ardoyne; Creggan Central in Derry comes 10th.  
However, only 27,000 people over the age of 65 live in these 100 most deprived areas whereas ten times that number of older people live elsewhere in Northern Ireland. This emphasises the difficulty of targeting older people experiencing poverty – many of them live individually or in pockets of deprivation that are small enough to be missed even using super output areas, which have quite low average populations of 2,000.
In addition, the published data do not contain any indicator of deprivation affecting older people apart from incomes, which accounts for only one quarter of the full measure of multiple deprivation. If resources were allocated on the basis of the poverty domain alone, it might miss a lot of other factors accounting for deprivation and social exclusion such as access to services or health and disability.
"poor pensioners tend to live in deprived areas"
There is a very high correlation (0.887) at super output area level between multiple deprivation affecting all people and income deprivation affecting older people. In other words, poor pensioners tend to live in deprived areas and well off pensioners to live in better off areas.
There are some exceptions, though. The most extreme is Forkhill 3 in Newry and Mourne, which has a score of 0.72 in income deprivation among people aged 65+, making it the 56th worst (the higher the score the lower the rank); its multiple deprivation score for the entire population is much less at 22.54, giving it a rank of 336.
Drumnamoe 1 in Craigavon, Coalisland South in Dungannon, Culmore 4 in Derry and Conlig 3 in North Down are among the other super output areas where the rate of income deprivation among older people is much higher than the multiple deprivation scores.
On the other hand, in some cases the level of income deprivation among pensioners is lower than might be expected from the overall deprivation scores in their areas. Atlantic super output area in Coleraine, for example, has a score of 22.54 in overall deprivation (ranked 334) but a far lower rate of 0.27 in pensioner poverty (ranked 634). Similarly, Poleglass 2 in Lisburn and Aldergrove 3 in Antrim fare much better in poverty among older people than in overall deprivation.
Incidentally, nearby Aldergrove 1, which has a total population of 2,084, has a pensioner poverty rate of 0.00: it is the only super output area in Northern Ireland with no older people living in it.
The 2010 Northern Ireland multiple deprivation measures are available in table and map forms at http://www.nisra.gov.uk/deprivation/update_of_nimdm_2005.htm
 

 

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