Fair and Square? Social and Spatial Inequalities in Northern Ireland, 2001

Abstract

Please click here to download the map associated with this article. This paper concerns spatial and social inequalities in Northern Ireland (NI). Social and spatial inequalities are essentially the differences between areas (or individuals) within a given context, for example, within a country. NI is an often omitted region of the United Kingdom in analysis. It has many similarities to the rest of Great Britain, but also some important differences. Using data from the Census of Population in 2001, social and spatial inequalities in Northern Ireland are examined and explored. The areal unit used, the gridsquare, has been underutilised, primarily because it covers only NI. As this resource has been underused, it provides a new perspective for exploring social and spatial inequalities. Using descriptive mapping allows the visualisation of patterns in the data which, when combined with spatial analysis (the Moran statistic) allows quantification of patterns in the data. This approach, combining census data and the gridsquare areal unit, provides a fine grained approach to mapping. A realistic picture of population can be formed using the gridsquare compared with the usual census boundaries. The extent of the map area is NI, every coloured square is equal to one kilometre squared.