Estimating small area income deprivation (and other things)- experiments with spatial microsimulation

Whilst offering coverage of a range of research and policy relevant variables at small area levels the UK census is notably lacking in coverage of income, consumption and expenditure. This paper will describe a spatial microsiumulation method that was developed to estimate small area levels of ICT uptake and related expenditures but which has evolved into a tool for estimating small area income deprivation as input to future Indices of Deprivation. The presentation will show a range of results including attempts to validate the estimates with third party data and will discuss recent attempts to estimate income inequalities within small areas using a spatially microsimulated synthetic income census.