A comparison of two neighborhood-level socioeconomic indexes in the United States

Abstract

socioeconomic indexes that capture information about wealth, education, employment, and housing are in wide use in public health. Here we compare the widely used Area Deprivation Index (ADI) to the Yost index. Though they are derived largely from the same data, there are substantial differences between the two. Examination of the geographic areas where the two indexes are most dissimilar suggest that the Yost index has greater face validity and that the ADI is highly sensitive to locations with incomplete census data and with census data containing outliers.

Keywords: Area deprivation index; Block groups; Small area analysis; Socioeconomic status; Yost index.