That leaves researchers with two options to proxy for deprivation – use a survey that must be completed by virtually the entire UK population (i.e. the Census) and/or rely upon administrative data sources.
Townsend’s approach around forty years pakistan rcs data ago was to build a measure using the Census, given this contained a number of variables that were likely to be correlated with deprivation, such as housing tenure and job market outcomes. He chose to use four fields. These specifically related to unemployment, overcrowding, household tenure and car ownership. The Carstairs index surfaced at a similar time and drew upon comparable fields from the Census, with the use of social class instead of home ownership being the main distinction.
In recent decades, we have seen administrative datasets on matters such as health, income and employment gradually emerge. As they are also expected to be associated with deprivation, space. Indeed, it is partly such sources of information on which the Indices of Deprivation have been created – the most commonly used area-based measure in all four nations.