Open AccessInto a SEIFA SES cul‐de‐sac?
Author(s) -
McCracken Kevin
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of public health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.946
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1753-6405
pISSN - 1326-0200
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-842x.2001.tb00584.x
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , inequality , government (linguistics) , sociology , social inequality , geography , political science , medicine , philosophy , mathematical analysis , linguistics , mathematics
Use of the Australian Bureau of Statistics' SEIFA scores has almost become an automatic practice in area‐based research on socio‐economic status (SES) corrrelates of health inequalities in Australia in recent years. This article questions the wisdom of this emerging heavy, often singular, reliance on the SEIFA indexes for representing areal socio‐economic condition. It is argued that improvements in our understanding of the social and economic processes that produce health inequalities will not occur unless we move beyond SEIFA's broad brush. Data for New England Area Health local government areas are used to support the argument.