Social
Measuring multidimensional disadvantage of children in Australia using whole-of-population linked administrative data Anna Kalamkarian* Anna Kalamkarian Rhiannon Pilkington John Lynch Murthy Mittinty Catia Malvaso Catherine Chittleborough
Introduction:
Quantifying the size and characteristics of populations experiencing disadvantage is a pre-requisite for informed allocation of prevention resources. We used individual-level linked administrative data on children and their parents to describe the prevalence and distribution of multiple disadvantages that children are exposed to from the 12 months before birth to age 5.
Methods:
De-identified linked administrative data was used from the Better Evidence Better Outcomes Linked Data (BEBOLD) platform on all children born in South Australia between 2004-2011 (n=143,083) in addition to data on their parents.
Eleven domains were created to capture different forms of disadvantage: economic, education, access to services, mental health, substance misuse, smoking during pregnancy, domestic and family violence, health, child protection contact, justice system contact, and parental death.
Prevalence estimates of age-specific disadvantage were measured for each domain over the six-year period. Co-occurrence of the 20 most prevalent disadvantage domain combinations were investigated using UpSet Plots.
Results:
We present multi-dimensional disadvantage using a “dashboard approach,” where the proportion of the population experiencing disadvantage on each possible combination of domains was examined but not combined. One in two children (48%) experienced at least one disadvantage domain, and one in seven (14%) experienced 3 or more disadvantage domains before age 5. Economic disadvantage was most prevalent, affecting 27% of all children, and had high levels of co-occurrence with other disadvantages.
Conclusion:
This study demonstrates the potential for administrative data collections to quantify individual-level multidimensional disadvantage. Given the whole-of-population linked data available, this study provides an alternative to the use of area-level disadvantage measures and highlights the experience of multiple disadvantages in families before age 5 in South Australia.