The Socioeconomic Index for Small Areas (SEISA) – a UK-wide measure of deprivation

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) developed the Socioeconomic Index for Small Areas (SEISA) dataset in 2021 with the aim of creating a standardised indicator of deprivation across the entire UK, down to Output Area (OA) level.

It has been developed to broadly highlight socioeconomic inequalities down to a small neighbourhood level, and to be used by admissions departments in higher education to assess the background of applicants.

Whereas the Indices of Deprivation (IoD) are created individually for each country within the UK, SEISA instead takes nationally available figures to create a measure which can be applied across the entire UK. 

This has the advantage of allowing close comparison between two areas within the UK, however SEISA’s more narrow methodological scope means it is not necessarily comparable to the IoD as an indicator, and instead should be considered a complementary measure.

 

How SEISA works

SEISA measures deprivation by combining two metrics at OA level:

• Proportion of residents with below degree-level qualifications – this indicates the overall level of education within an area.
• Proportion of residents not employed in professional or managerial services – this indicates the employment quality, and prevalence of higher-status jobs in the area.

These figures are then simply averaged to create a singular figure for each OA across the UK. HESA opted to use these figures as they deemed them to be the most broadly representative indicators of deprivation. HESA considered additional measures like housing quality, however poor housing quality is usually a result of low income.

As low income often results from access to employment and the education levels that allow for higher-paying jobs, HESA chose to keep the measure simply focused on education & employment. You can read the full technical report here for more details, with a full explanation of the measures chosen within Section 3.

Currently the SEISA dataset uses census data from 2011, however they are looking to update the measure with 2021 census data, once statistical geographies from all UK countries have been released.

 

The benefits of SEISA

SEISA’s strength lies in its ability to highlight broad educational and economic inequalities at a small level between any area of the UK.

Here are some of the key benefits of SEISA:

• SEISA allows for UK-wide comparison by combining nationally available datasets to create SEISA, it allows for comparison between any area in any country.

• Whereas the IoD has been created at an LSOA level, SEISA has been created at the smaller OA level, allowing for more granular analysis.

 

The limitations of SEISA

The main limitation of SEISA is that it relies on only two indicators, whereas deprivation is much more multifaceted than this.  

SEISA claims to be a UK wide measure of deprivation, however it only assesses education & employment. The IoD considers seven domains of deprivation, including income, employment, education, health, crime, access to housing and services, and living environment, which are then weighted and combined to form the overall measure of multiple deprivation.

Other limitations of SEISA include:

• It is a relative measure, so although it can indicate differences in deprivation, it’s a comparative measure rather than a statistic, meaning that the number itself in isolation has little meaning.

• It’s based on 2011 data which is now over a decade old. As the economic landscape of the UK has changed quite significantly since then, it brings to question how accurate the measure is for current analysis.

• It is a dataset that measures proxy predictors of deprivation, rather than being a direct indicator of deprivation. Not having a degree, or not working in a professional / managerial occupation, are not typically considered as direct indicators of deprivation.

 

Where to explore SEISA

You can use Local Insight to start exploring different datasets, and how they can provide new analysis of the areas that matter most to you. 

Both SEISA and the IoD are available to use and explore within Local Insight, along with more than 1000 small-area socio-economic datasets available.

In addition, Local Insight allows you to:

• Create any neighbourhood you like and have data instantly matched to it.
• Access data via maps, reports, dashboards and CSV exports.
• Add your own organisational data into the system to compare with the contextual data we pre-load into the system for you.

To learn more and explore this data yourself, book a demo today.

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