Deprivation in a given geographical area is defined as the relative lack of goods, resources or services that are widely available in society at large. For years, deprivation in Spain was measured using indices imported from other countries. However these must be checked to ensure they provide an adequate measure of deprivation in our own setting.
Members of DEMAP have proven that not all deprivation indices are useful to measure this concept in Spain. They have now proposed a deprivation index for small areas in Spain (IPAP) based on illiteracy and unemployment rates and the percentage of manual labourers.
Each municipality has been assigned a number of points, thus enabling permanent grading of geographical areas, ranking from a lesser to a higher degree of deprivation. Zero indicates average deprivation.
Please refer to the following paper for more details on methods and results:
C Sánchez-Cantalejo, R Ocaña-Riola, A Fernández. Deprivation index for small areas in Spain. Social Indicators Research 2008; 89: 259-273.
Interested parties may request the full text article via the contact link on this web site