Ranking Regions - Revisiting an Index of Relative Indigenous Socio-economic Outcomes

For any chance of success in achieving targets for improvement in Indigenous socio-economic outcomes, policy makers need to understand where relative and absolute need is greatest. To summarise the distribution of relative need a single index can be used to rank regions or areas within regions. In this paper nine outcomes across employment, education, income and housing from the 2001 and 2006 Censuses are used to create a single index for 37 Indigenous Regions and 531 Indigenous Areas. Across the nine input variables the large capital city regions were the least disadvantaged. At the other end of the distribution, remote regions ranked relatively poorly, especially in the Northern Territory. While this distribution was similar to that found in previous Censuses, at the region and area level especially there was some significant change between 2001 and 2006. Much of this change was related to high rates of inward migration.