Health and socioeconomic disadvantage Although the overall level of health and

Data source and definitions

wellbeing of Australians is relatively high compared with other countries, there are significant disparities in the health outcomes of different populations within Australia. In particular, people who live in areas with poorer socioeconomic conditions tend to have worse health than people from other areas. Previous analysis has shown that disadvantaged
Australians have higher levels of disease risk factors and lower use of preventative health services than those who experience socioeconomic advantage.1

This article mainly uses data from the ABS 2007–08
National Health Survey. The analysis is restricted to all people aged 15 years and over unless otherwise stated.
The ABS has developed four indexes to rank the level of social and economic wellbeing of a region.
The analysis in this article uses the Socio-Economic
Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) of Disadvantage based upon the 2006 Census of Population and Housing.
The SEIFA index of relative disadvantage combines a number of variables (such as income, education and unemployment) of people, families and dwellings within an area, and ranks these areas on a scale of relative disadvantage. In this article the scale is divided into quintiles – with the first quintile representing the areas of greatest relative disadvantage and the fifth quintile representing the areas of least relative disadvantage.

This article will use the Socio-Economic Index of
Disadvantage for Areas (SEIFA) to examine the association between socioeconomic disadvantage and health. It should be noted that SEIFA scores are based on summary measures that represent an average of people and households in an area and should not be presumed to apply to all individuals within that area.

This article primarily