The fabric of the marginalisation index

The GCRO's marginalisation index combines a range of variables measuring various aspects of both subjective and objective marginalisation. It is constructed from responses to 29 Quality of Life survey questions, grouped into 10 different dimensions - relationships; housing; participation; health; connectivity; hunger; crime; alienation; life satisfaction; and government. While the overall index scores provide us with a sense of marginalisation across the Gauteng City-Region (GCR), looking at the individual dimension scores can provide greater insight into different aspects of deprivation.

Using a series of radial plots, this visualisation presents the scores for each dimension of the marginalisation index for each survey iteration since 2011. We illustrate these scores for Gauteng as a whole, as well as each municipality, for 2011, 2013/14, 2015/16, and 2017/18. Points closer to the centre of each plot represent greater deprivation, while those further from the centre indicate domains in which marginalisation is lower.

The marginalisation index visualisation shows that the dimension of participation varies the most with each survey. This is most likely because it consists of a single indicator. The highest scoring dimension in the index is connectivity, reflecting respondents' access to television, radio, phone and internet.

For comparative purposes, a similar data visualisation showing the Quality of Life index can be viewed here.

If you are interested in understanding which questions feed into the different dimensions of the QoL and marginalisation indices, this paper outlines the theoretical underpinnings, while these documents map out each variable and dimension for the QoL and marginalisation indices, and their scores over time.