Demographic and Deprivation Ratios: examples of their use in understanding underlying spatial patterns in social phenomena

The intention of this paper is to explore the concept of standardized demographic ordeprivation Ratios ? what they are, why they might be useful, for what statisticaldistributions they can be built, how they can be constructed and which research activitiesand policy areas they might inform.Such Ratios are designed to demonstrate the extent to which the local levels of variousstatistical measures are above or below the level that would be ?expected? on the basis ofthe demographic make up of local areas. They would answer questions such as ?Isunemployment in this town high for a place of this sort??; ?Is the reason for the high levelof vodka consumption in Scotland something to do with local history or local culture orcan it be explained as a consequence of the demographics of the Scottish population?? or?Is the level of burglary in Avon and Somerset above the level that it ought to be, bearingin mind the characteristics of its population??The analysis of standardised Ratios is also relevant to the study of regionalization. Weare used to the administrative regions in terms of which government divide the countryand publish statistics. The mapping of Standardised Ratios shows the extent to whichthese administrative boundaries correspond to the boundaries of ?natural? regions, thesebeing defined as sets of adjacent areas sharing similar values on a broad range ofStandardised Ratios.Relating the actual levels of social statistics to some measure of what might be expectedon the basis of the population is clearly relevant to the evaluation of local performance,whether in the private or the public sector and Ratios of this sort, for example MortalityRatios, have been used for many years by health professional to benchmark local levelsof mortality against the level which might be expected on the basis of the gender and age.However the mapping of the difference between actual and expected rates can oftenthrow interesting light on cultural differences between regions and sub regions of thecountry which persist despite the homogenizing tendency of central government andnational or even multinational retail multiples.The paper illustrates the potential meaning and use of these Ratios by means of a set oftwelve demographic and deprivation Ratios created from the 2001 census in the UK

Neighbourhood segregation and social mobility among the descendants of Middlesbrough's 19th century Celtic immigrants

This paper is one of a series of research papers which form part of an ESRC funded research project on?The Quantitative Analysis of Family Names?. The purpose of this project is to assess the contribution thatinformation on the geographic distribution of family names can make to the study of historic migrationpatterns within local areas of Great Britain. The particular focus of this paper is Middlesbrough and EastCleveland, to which economic migrants were drawn in large numbers from Scotland, Ireland and Cornwallas well as from the North East of England during its rapid nineteenth century industrialisation.By examining the geographic distribution of different types of family name in the Middlesbrough area in2003 it is possible to infer that the descendants of Scottish migrants have been more upwardly mobile thandescendants of Irish migrants and that few descendants of Cornish migrants have moved out of the miningvillages in which they originally settled. Among the descendants of Scottish and Irish migrants there isclear evidence of social stratification between the descendants of those who originally migrated directly toMiddlesbrough and those who reached Middlesbrough indirectly and / or only in recent years. Bothcommunities have fared less successfully than those who moved to Middlesbrough from elsewhere in theNorth East of England whilst the most economically successful Middlesbrough residents appear to bedrawn predominantly from people with names traditionally found in regions of the country other than theNorth East

Neighbourhood inequalities in the patterns of hospital admissions and their application to the targeting of health promotion campaigns

For many years indicators of deprivation have played a pivotal role in the processwhereby government assesses the relative level of resources require to meet local healthneeds. The formulae that have been developed for this purpose recognise that the locallevel of need for health resources varies among different population groups, such as theelderly or people with young children1. The formulae also recognise the strength of therelationship between health and deprivation. O ver a hundred years ago public healthofficials first recognised differences in the rates of mortality among different occupations.Likewise today?s funding formulae recognise the especial needs of local areas with highproportions of particular ly deprived groups such as overcrowded households, personswithout access to a car or people who are unemployed. As the focus of the health serviceincreasingly extends beyond the treatment of patients to an attempt to improve the healthof local populations through preventative campaigns, the focus of targeting extendslikewise to the identification of neighbourhoods at highest risk of particular diagnoses.To this end the National Health Service has recently commissioned a number of pilotexercises2 to assess the effectiveness of postcode classification systems in the targettingof health promotiona l material. In order to assess which types of neighbourhood are mostsuitable for specific communications programmes, the Hospital Episode Statistics haverecently been coded by Mosaic, the UK?s most widely used postcode classificationsystem. This paper summarises the key differences that have been found to exist betweenthese Mosaic types, both in terms of overall level of admissions and type of diagnosis.The paper also evaluates the extent to which the classification system may be an efficientmethod not just of targeting specific health campaigns but also for assessing levels ofneed by type of service at a highly local level

The relative power of geodemographics vis a vis person and household level demographic variables as discriminators of consumer behaviour

Geodemographics is a field of study which involves the classification of consumersaccording to the type of neighbourhood in which they live. As a method of segmentingconsumers it has long been of value to direct marketers who, being often unable toidentify the age, marital status or occupational status of people in mailing lists, found it auseful means of applying selectivity to their mail shots. By analysing the behaviouralcharacteristics of consumers in different types of neighbourhoods they found they couldimprove business performance by targeting promotional activities to names and addressesfalling within specific types of postcode. From direct marketing the application ofgeodemographics spread to the targeting of door to door distribution and customercommunications and to the retail industry where it was found to be useful input into theprocess of deciding where to site new outlets. Government is increasingly using suchmethods to improve the targeting of its own communications to tailor local servicedelivery to the particular needs of local communities.During the 25 years since geodemographics was first introduced few users have had aclear understanding of precisely neighbourhood differences come about. Are differencesin consumption patterns at neighbourhoods level simply the predictable result ofdifferences in the age, household composition, educational status or occupational profileof their residents? Or do additional, incremental neighbourhood effects operate? Whendeciding neighbourhoods to live in do people select ones whose values and consumerpreferences are broadly similar to their own? Or is it only after they have moved thattheir behaviours change, as they become subject, consciously or not, to the prevailingethos of the new community in which they find themselves?To set these alternative explanations this study analyses a random set of consumerbehaviours covered by the Target Group Index, one of a number of market researchsurveys whose respondents have been coded by the type of neighbourhood in which theylive; it uses a statistic to measure the extent to which the Mosaic geodemographic systemis effective in discriminating on these behaviours; it then measures the relativeeffectiveness of other frequently used household and person level demographics inpredicting of these behaviours; finally it compares the predictive efficiency of differentdiscriminators.The conclusion that can be drawn from the exercise is that, across these behaviours aswhole, the type of neighbourhood in which a consumer lives is a significantly morepredictive piece of information that any person or household level discriminator (such asage or social grade). By implication therefore it is almost certain that significantneighbourhood effects must operate for many of the behaviours tested. However therelative discriminatory power of geodemographics and person and household leveldiscriminators varies considerably from behaviour to behaviour. Even when takingmeasures of status which one might have expected to be highly correlated, such as socialgrade, terminal education age or household income, there are considerable differences intheir relative predictiveness across most consumer behaviours

QCD Jets and Parton Showers

I discuss the calculation of QCD jet rates in e+e- annihilation as a testing ground for parton shower simulations and jet finding algorithms.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, contribution to Proceedings of Gribov-80 Memorial Workshop on Quantum Chromodynamic and Beyond, ICTP, Trieste, Italy, 26-28 May, 201

Combining QCD Matrix Elements and Parton Showers

A new method for combining QCD matrix elements and parton showers in Monte Carlo simulations of hadronic final states is outlined. The aim is to provide at least a leading-order description of all hard multi-jet configurations together with jet fragmentation to next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy, while avoiding the most serious problems of double counting.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures. Talk at XXXV Rencontres de Moriond, Les Arcs, France, March 200