Long Term Monitoring of Health Inequalities: Headline Indicators – October 2014

Technical developments since last report

A number of developments have occurred since the 2013 publication of this report. The net impact is that the figures included this year are not comparable with those published in previous years. However, all trends have been backdated and are therefore shown on a consistent basis over time within this report. The patterns of trends over time are broadly consistent with those presented in previous reports. An illustration of the impact on trends is provided in Annex 2.

The technical developments are listed below and described in more detail in Annex 2.

European age-standardised rates

Rates are age-standardised in order to show trends after taking account of changes in the age distribution of the population over time. The 2013 European Standard Population (ESP) has been used to calculate European age-standardised rates in this publication. Previous versions of this report used the ESP which was first produced in 1976.^[6]

Revised population estimates for Scotland

Population estimates for Scotland between the years 2002 and 2010 were updated by National Records of Scotland (NRS) in December 2013, and again in May 2014 at datazone level. The revised estimates are based on the 2011 Census. These revisions impact the calculation of age-standardised rates and also the income-employment methodology described below.

Income-employment deciles

Income-employment deciles, which define the deprivation scale used in this report, have been recalculated for all years. These changes take account of revised population estimates for years 2002 to 2010. The use of SIMD throughout the period of the report was also reviewed, with some changes made to ensure that the most appropriate year's SIMD update was used in the derivation of income-employment deciles throughout the time series.