Abstract
Council tax valuation bands (CTVBs) are a categorisation of household property value in Great Britain. The aim of the study was to assess the CTVB as a measure of socio-economic status by comparing the strength of the associations between selected health and lifestyle outcomes and CTVBs with two measures of socio-economic status: the National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC) and the 2001 UK census-based Townsend deprivation index.MethodsCross-sectional analysis of data on 12,092 respondents (adjusted response 62.7%) to the Caerphilly Health and Social Needs Study, a postal questionnaire survey undertaken in Caerphilly county borough, south-east Wales, UK. The CTVB was assigned to each individual by matching the sampling frame to the local authority council tax register. Crude and age-gender adjusted odds ratios for each category of CTVB, NS-SEC and fifth of the ward distribution of Townsend scores were estimated for smoking, poor diet, obesity, and limiting long-term illness using logistic regression. Mean mental (MCS) and physical (PCS) component summary scores of the Short-Form SF-36 health status questionnaire were estimated in general linear models.ResultsThere were significant trends in odds ratios across the CTVB categories for all outcomes, most marked for smoking and mental and physical health status. The adjusted odds ratio for being a smoker in the lowest versus highest CTVB category was 3.80 (95% CI: 3.06, 4.71), compared to 3.00 (95% CI: 2.30, 3.90) for the NS-SEC 'never worked and long-term unemployed' versus 'higher managerial and professional' categories, and 1.61 (95% CI: 1.42, 1.83) for the most deprived versus the least deprived Townsend fifth. The difference in adjusted mean MCS scores was 5.9 points on the scale for CTVB, 9.2 for NS-SEC and 3.2 for the Townsend score. The values for the adjusted mean PCS scores were 6.3 points for CTVB, 11.3 for NS-SEC, and 2.5 for the Townsend score.ConclusionCTVBs assigned to individuals were strongly associated with the health and lifestyle outcomes modelled in this study. CTVBs are readily available for all residential properties and deserve further consideration as a proxy for socio-economic status in epidemiological studies in Great Britain.
Highlights
Council tax valuation bands (CTVBs) were introduced by the 1992 Local Government Finance Act [1] to enable local government in Great Britain to raise tax revenue
CTVBs have been shown in previous studies to be a potentially useful measure of individual level socio-economic status, as residence in lower value property bands is associated with non-owner occupier housing tenure and poor access to a car [3], the Jarman index of the enumeration district of residence [4], and a range of socio-economic factors measured on mothers participating in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) [5]
We found a trend of a higher proportion of missing CTVBs in wards with more affluent Townsend scores (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient r = -0.36, p = 0.03)
Summary
Council tax valuation bands (CTVBs) were introduced by the 1992 Local Government Finance Act [1] to enable local government in Great Britain to raise tax revenue. CTVBs have been shown in previous studies to be a potentially useful measure of individual level socio-economic status, as residence in lower value property bands is associated with non-owner occupier housing tenure and poor access to a car [3], the Jarman index of the enumeration district of residence [4], and a range of socio-economic factors measured on mothers participating in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) [5]. The further attraction of CTVBs is that because they are freely available from administrative data, they avoid the need to collect measures of socio-economic status using population surveys and are immune to poor participation, and they are less prone to the ecological fallacy than census-based area deprivation scores when used as a proxy for individual socio-economic status [6]. Two studies have found strong associations between the CTVB and smoking status [5,10]
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