Consumer Insights Tracker Report July 2023 - March 2024: Annex

Annex

Definitions

Definitions of the IMD and social grade are provided below.

The Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) is calculated using country-specific metrics (domains of deprivation), such as income, barriers to housing and services and crime, which are combined to give an overall measure of relative deprivation within a respondent’s specific output area. These output areas are then ranked and within the report are grouped so that comparisons are made between those in the most deprived (1-3), middle (4-7) and least deprived (8-10) IMD deciles.

• England: The IMD ranks each English LSOA (Lower layer Super Output Areas) from 1 (most deprived) to 32,844 (least deprived)
• Wales: The Welsh equivalent (WIMD; Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation) ranks each Welsh LSOA from 1 (most deprived) to 1,909 (least deprived)
• Northern Ireland (NI): The NI equivalent ranks each OA (Output Area) from 1 (most deprived) to 5,022 (least deprived)

Social grade is a socio-economic metric classification which groups people into four classifications based on “the occupation of the Chief Income Earner (CIE)” of their household ^{(footnote 1)}. This report compares those in social grades AB, C1, C2 and DE as classified by the National Readership Survey (NRS).

The way in which social grade is classified is listed below:

• AB: higher and intermediate managerial, administrative and professional occupations
• C1: supervisory, clerical, and junior managerial, administrative and professional occupations
• C2: skilled manual occupations 
• DE: semi-skilled and unskilled manual occupations, unemployed and lowest grade occupations