Disaggregation of social report indicatorsAdditional information of social wellbeing at a subnational level is available Ideally, it would be possible to break down each indicator by sub-populations of interest, such as age, sex, ethnicity, socio-economic status, disability status and regional/local authority. Most indicators can be broken down by sex and ethnicity.3 However, the majority of the indicators rely on data sources that do not allow us to disaggregate by socio-economic status or disability status because either this type of information is not collected or sample sizes are too small to permit this form of disaggregation. There is an increasing demand for information on social wellbeing at a regional and local authority level. In large part this is a consequence of the introduction of the Local Government Act 2002 which requires regional and local authorities to monitor community outcomes. In response to this demand, we have, for the first time, disaggregated all of those social report indicators for which there is subnational data to regional boundaries. This information should help regional authorities to identify areas of comparative strength and weakness within their communities, and it will also assist central government agencies in their work at a regional level. The data on social wellbeing at a subnational level is provided in the regional section of this website in both tabular and map formats. Indicators for which more detailed subnational information is provided are marked in Table IN1 with an asterisk (*). Some level of subnational data is provided for 19 of the 42 indicators. In order to disaggregate some of these indicators to subnational boundaries we have had to use different data sources from those used to derive the national figures for this report. Hence, in some instances, the regional rates on the website are not directly comparable with the national rates. More detail on this can be found in the regional section of this website. Some regional analysis is also provided in the indicator section of this report, and there is a discussion of regional variance in social wellbeing in the Conclusion. More data on social wellbeing at a subnational level for the Big Cities4 group, sometimes using alternative data sources and indicators to those used in the social report, can also be found on the Quality of Life website. Analysis by population subgroup or by subnational boundaries highlights the differences between group averages. In most cases, however, the differences between members of any one group will be much greater than the differences between group averages. For example, reporting on social wellbeing at an Auckland regional boundary level masks the wide variation in outcomes that occurs within that region. |
