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The Scale of Dissimilarity: Concepts, Measurement and an Application to Socio‐Economic Variation Across England and Wales
Author(s) -
Voas David,
Williamson Paul
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
transactions of the institute of british geographers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.196
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1475-5661
pISSN - 0020-2754
DOI - 10.1111/j.0020-2754.2000.00465.x
Subject(s) - census , index of dissimilarity , index (typography) , scale (ratio) , geography , ethnic group , dimension (graph theory) , range (aeronautics) , variation (astronomy) , economic geography , statistics , econometrics , demographic economics , demography , regional science , sociology , mathematics , economics , cartography , computer science , population , materials science , physics , world wide web , anthropology , astrophysics , pure mathematics , composite material
The paper considers the scale – the measure, extent, and dimension – of uneven distributions in space for a wide range of census variables. While the traditional ‘index of dissimilarity’ is affected by random as well as social factors, a solution presented here allows the index to be calculated even for very small populations. Small areas across England and Wales tend to be fairly similar demographically but quite diverse on ethnic and socio‐economic measures. Differences between areas become more noticeable as we move from districts, to wards, to enumeration districts, but the rate of differentiation depends heavily on the variables considered.