Toddlers, teens and yoofs - where are they?

I've been doing some work on child poverty and social mobility recently, and part of this has involved looking at simple stats like the percentage of people in each area who are under 18. This has given me a better insight into which areas might be most affected by children's issues and policies. I've been looking across Great Britain but focusing on England and Wales and so I thought I'd just post a couple of maps showing the % of children across London Boroughs and the core cities - see below.

Bigger version for London

The results are quite striking - and particularly interesting I think are the differences between and within the core cities. What is also very interesting is the spatial divides in terms of which areas have a high concentration of children and which don't. These data overlap with many other datasets - which is partly what I'm looking at in my research right now - but this post is simply about the two maps.

Bigger version for core cities

One academic-related thought on this, though. I've been looking at the literature on neighbourhood effects over the past few years and following with interest the debate on where people 'choose' to live. This got me thinking about who might not get to choose, and children is one obvious group. As you can see from the maps there are large areas where 25% or more of the residents are children, and some areas where it is nearly 50%. Also interesting for me is the extent to which city centres in (e.g.) Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds are largely child-free - possibly linked to the concentration of students and new city centre living. Anyway, that's enough for now.

Technical note: this is done at the lower super output area level and for the local authority boundaries of the English core cities, plus all of Greater London. The data are from 2011 Census table KS102EW.

Children in Poverty

I think I've already said enough - and done enough mapping - of general deprivation indices across the UK. Well, probably. Either way, I thought it would be interesting to take a slightly different view. In England, the Indices of Deprivation 2010 include two supplementary indices: the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index (IDACI) and the Income Deprivation Affecting Older People Index (IDAOPI). Not very catchy acronyms, and these indices are not that well known, hence my efforts to map the IDACI data for England (screenshot below)...

The map I've produced in Google's Fusion Tables follows the format of many others I've done, but this time I've summarised the data using 2010 parliamentary constituencies - following the same method that the IMD people use to derive summary measures at the local authority level. On the main map, you can find out how deprived a constituency is (i.e. the relative rank in England) by clicking on it. Red = more deprived, blue = less deprived. Using this method, the constituencies with the highest levels of income deprivation affecting children are as follows:

1. Poplar and Limehouse
2. Bethnal Green and Bow
3. Manchester Central
4. Tottenham
5. Hackney South and Shoreditch
6. Birmingham Ladywood
7. Islington South and Finsbury
8. Edmonton
9. West Ham
10. Birmingham Hodge Hill

The really noticeable thing here is the number of London constituencies. In the general IMD for England, it is areas in the North West which dominate, but not here. As to why this is, there are many reasons but that's not the point today. Why not explore the national patterns on the map and see how your area compares (if you live in England). The most important thing about all this is, of course, the fact that so many children in England are adversely affected by income deprivation.