Term: Neighborhood Poverty

Glossary Definition

Last Updated: 2024-06-06

Definition:

To assess neighborhood poverty, MCHP has developed two separate measures of neighborhood-level wealth from the Canada Census data:

Both measures incorporate average income levels at the Census Dissemination Area (DA) level, and use the Postal Code Conversion File (PCCF) from Statistics Canada to identify the neighborhood DA associated with postal codes for individuals in the Manitoba Health Insurance Registry (MHIR).

The Income Quintiles use only area-average income levels, and rank urban and rural areas separately into 5 quintiles, from lowest to highest (U1-U5 for urban, R1-R5 for rural). The urban and rural quintiles may be combined into a single Q1-Q5 ranking when urbanicity is included as a separate dichotomous covariate in a statistical model.

The SEFI-2 measure also incorporates Census DA-level average data on unemployment, single parent households, and proportion without high school graduation, to produce a continuous, normalized, composite score of socioeconomic factors for the neighborhood, with larger scores reflecting a higher level of socioeconomic challenges.

For more detailed information on the Income Quintiles and SEFI-2 measures, please read the individual concepts with links provided below.

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