Scotland’s Deprivation on a Map

SIMD Map 2020
This page contains an interactive map which shows the overall (summary) position of each of the 6976 individual zones that the Scottish government uses to publish the data.  It shows the geographical distribution of Scotland’s deprivation and is based on analysis of all the individual measures of deprivation.  These include health, income, education, employment, housing, access (rural services and isolation ) and crime. The most deprived zones are depicted in purple and the least deprived zones in green with the zones are grouped into decile ranges. There is a pop-up if you hover over a zone which provides additional information: Data Zone ID, Local Authority,  plus the ranks for overall SIMD2020, income, health and employment.

Distribution of Scotland’s Deprivation

When you zoom into the more densely populated areas it is clear that many of the most deprived areas are within or on the fringes of cites and large towns.  Much of this deprivation stems from post-industrialisation caused by closing of heavy and light engineering works and factories and the cessation of coal mining.   Nevertheless, there are still clusters of deprivation in rural areas: Highland; Western Isles; North, East and South Ayrshire, Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders.  The seemingly better performance across some parts of the North West Highlands and the Grampian Mountains may hide local deprivation where low paid workers and the elderly population live alongside wealthy landowners.

This is a large file (approx. 30mb) because it contains map coordinates necessary to draw the 6976 data zones. It takes 3 – 4 seconds to load – so please be patient. Once it downloads you will be able to move it around and zoom in to visualise areas in more detail. Densely populated areas appear black before you zoom in because the data zones are tightly packed but will become clearer in close up view. Shetland isles are just off the top of the map but are visible when the chart is pulled down.

Figure 1  SIMD Map of Scotland. The most deprived areas (decile 1) is coloured deep pink while the zones that are least deprived (decile 10) are dark green.  Zoom in using the [ + – ] buttons and drag the map and or the legend to fit.

For details of the oversight and methodology of the data collection used by the Scottish Government please see:
https://www.gov.scot/collections/scottish-index-of-multiple-deprivation-2020/