Overall Trends

The overall details of datazones in the bottom 15% in Glasgow are as follows.  This table gives the details of datazones in Glasgow in the bottom 976 datazones in Scotland.

Year	No Datazones	Population	% City Total
SIMD 04	373	309,000	53.4%
SIMD 06	330	269,100	46.5%
SIMD 09	302	245,300	42.0%
SIMD 12	289	235,400	39.4%

The release date of the SIMD does not always correspond to the latest date of the data.  Consequently, the population details for 2001 have been used for the SIMD04, 2004 for SIMD06, and 2008 for SIMD09.  For the 2012 SIMD, the population mid-year estimate for 2011 has been used (note - not the Census).  This table clearly shows the decline in the proportion of Glasgow's population living in a deprived area.

The same decline can be seen when a tighter definition of deprivation is used, such as the bottom 5%, or the 325 most deprived datazones in Scotland.

Year	No Datazones	Population	% City Total
SIMD 04	226	186,600	32.2%
SIMD 06	169	132,800	22.9%
SIMD 09	158	126,100	21.6%
SIMD 12	148	118,400	19.8%

If there is a decline in the 1%-15% category, it follows there must be an increase somewhere else.  To start with, the following table looks at the number of datazones in the 16%-50% category (ranking 977 to 3,252) for the four SIMD waves.

Year	No Datazones	Population	% City Total
SIMD 04	182	150,150	25.9%
SIMD 06	195	164,000	28.3%
SIMD 09	215	181,000	31.0%
SIMD 12	228	202,300	33.8%

And this table covers the number of datazones in the top half of the SIMD distribution - the 51%-100% group, that includes datazones ranked 3,253 to 6,505.

Year	No Datazones	Population	% City Total
SIMD 04	139	119,500	20.6%
SIMD 06	169	145,700	25.2%
SIMD 09	177	157,900	27.0%
SIMD 12	177	161,100	26.9%

Initial Release and Analysis

As the 2012 Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation is released on 18th December 2012, there is only a limited amount of work that can be done prior to its initial release.  However there are some possible avenues of work that we know can be developed.

Change over time: as datazones have consistent boundaries, the results for 2012 can be compared with the SIMDs for 2004, 2006 and 2009, to build up a consistent picture of how areas have changed (or not changed) over the last decade.

Relationship with other data: we can relate the SIMD details with other data sources to build up an understanding of the factors that might be driving the change in particular areas.  Demographic trends (particularly involving the 25-44 age group), house price and housing tenure (esp the private rented sector) and ethnic diversity are the most obvious areas of comparison.

Use of the Index: the SIMD has been designed to identify areas of multiple deprivation, and to this end the convention has been to define those areas in the bottom 15% datazones (ie the bottom 976 out of Scotland's 6505 datazones) as being deprived.  This is of course an arbitrary definition - but it does open up the opportunity to look at other groupings, including

• Detailed analysis of the 5% most deprived datazones, which may be a more accurate definition of deprivation;
• Matching relative change to absolute change;
• Using the Index to describe change unrelated to deprivation, such as the 16%-50% and 51%-100% categories;
• Comparing Glasgow with other surrounding local authorities.

A workplan will be developed to cover these themes and relevant analysis will be featured on this blog.