Abstract

Statistics Sweden annually produces a socio-economic index on residential area level, which combines the proportions of people who have a low level of education, who have been long-term unemployed and who have a low income, respectively, into a single index on a scale from 0 to 100. Based on the mean and standard deviation of the socio-economic index, the residential areas are classified into five different socio-economical categories.

In the last three years, we have developed the classification further to obtain a more nuanced picture of social exclusion in the various residential areas in Sweden. The aim is to identify residential areas with specific or multiple social exclusion problems and to relate these findings to structural and/or demographic conditions in the neighbourhood. To this end, we have identified register data that are suitable to use as key indicators for each of the following seven areas: dependency on benefits, criminality, low voter turnout, weak connection to the labour market, weak school results, overcrowding and bad health. Considerable effort was needed to define the key indicators properly so that they have sufficient quality, which regard to validity, stability, timeliness, and reliability.

The key indicators are combined to a single social exclusion classification using a multivariate approach. This multivariate approach has recently been supplemented with a method to quantify the development over time in the residential areas, controlling for the general development in the country.