Analysis of protected characteristics by area deprivation: 2017 to 2019

This analysis includes estimates of how many people within each protected characteristic group live in areas within each Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD) 2019 deprivation grouping. It identifies where people from various protected characteristic groups are most likely to live in terms of small area, relative deprivation and whether this varies across groups. The analysis uses three year pooled data from the Annual Population Survey (APS) for the population characteristics.

The Equality Act 2010 protects from discrimination based on nine protected characteristics. In this release, there is data for seven of these:

• age and sex
• disability status
• ethnicity
• marital status
• religion
• sexual identity

The Welsh Government accepts the social definition of disability, in which it is recognised that barriers in society act to disable people who have impairments or health conditions or who use British Sign Language. The APS captures data during the interview based around the Equality Act 2010 which uses the medical definition of disability (a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term impact on a person’s ability to carry out normal day to day activities).

WIMD is designed to identify small areas in Wales where there are the highest concentrations of several different types of deprivation. WIMD 2019 is the most recent index and ranks all small areas in Wales from 1 (most deprived) to 1,909 (least deprived). The small areas are otherwise known as Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs). This geography is built from census data and represents small areas each with a population of around 1,600 people.

Here, WIMD 2019 small area ranks have been placed in order and grouped into deprivation groups. These are designed to have smaller groups at the more deprived end of the distribution, where the difference between areas is greater than at the less deprived end. Although WIMD identifies concentrations of deprivation, it’s important to remember that there are people living in deprived areas that would not be considered deprived, and there are also people that would be considered to be deprived living in the least deprived areas.

More information about WIMD 2019.

More information on equality and diversity statistics.

Key findings

Females from all age groups are more likely to live in more deprived areas than males. On average, 9.2% of females live in the 10% most deprived LSOAs compared with 8.7% of males. They also make up a greater share of all those living in the 10% most deprived LSOAs. 52.1% of those living in the 10% most deprived LSOAs are female.

Younger people are more likely than older people to live in the 10% most deprived LSOAs, with the likelihood slightly higher for females than males. Around 21% of people aged 24 or under live in the most deprived 20% of LSOAs in Wales compared with around 14% of those aged 65 or over. Nearly 61,000 children under age 16 live in the 10% most deprived LSOAs compared with 38,300 people aged 65 and over.

Black Asian Minority Ethnic people are more than twice as likely to live in the 10% most deprived LSOAs, than white people (20.6% of ethnic minority people compared to 8.3% of White people). Black people are most likely to live in the 10% most deprived LSOAs with over a third living in these areas (35%). Over 1 in 10 people living in the 10% most deprived areas are from ethnic minority groups, despite only making up 5% of the total population in Wales.

People who are disabled are more likely to live in the 10% most deprived areas than people who are not disabled (13.8% compared to 8.1% respectively). Disabled people make up 1 in 3 of all people living in these areas.

As a group those people who describe their sexual identity as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual or anything other than heterosexual/straight (LGBO+ ) are slightly more likely than heterosexuals to live in the 10% most deprived LSOAs (10.0% compared to 8.4% respectively).

People of Muslim faith are over four times more likely than Christians to live in the 10% most deprived LSOA’s in Wales, with just under 1 in 3 Muslims living in these areas. Having said this, 38.7% of people living in the 10% most deprived LSOAs in Wales are Christian compared with 6.4% being of Muslim faith. This is because there are over 26 times more Christians living in Wales than Muslims.

Those with no religion are slightly more at risk than those with a religion to live in the most deprived areas (9.8% and 8.2% respectively) and those with no religion also make up a bigger share of all people living in the 10% most deprived LSOAs (51.7%).

Single people are more than twice as likely to live in the 10% most deprived LSOAS compared with those who are married or in a civil partnership (12.1% and 5.8% respectively). 10.2% of people who are separated, divorced or from a dissolved civil partnership live in the most deprived areas and 7.7% of people who are widowed live in these areas. Nearly half of all people living in the most deprived 10% of LSOAs are single.

Due to small underlying sample sizes, this analysis does not consider intersectionality between protected characteristics. However, intersectionality may have an impact on the findings.