Getting down to small areas: estimating regional income and wealth in Australia using spatial microsimulation

In the past few years NATSEM has developed spatial modelling techniques to create synthetic small area socio-economic data. This is achieved by combining the Census data with that from the ABS national sample surveys. This paper describes the techniques used to create the synthetic small area data. It then provides some examples of how the new methods and data are being used for estimation and analysis of income, wealth and other socio-economic characteristics, as well as the spatial distribution of policy change.