PCCF+ and Socioeconomic Status Reference File

October 27, 2020

Question

I have a question from a Grad student using the PCCF+ and a file called the socioeconomic status reference file (.txt format) that should be available with the PCCF+ files.

The student found reference to this file in CIHI Measuring Health Inequalities. From the student’s email:

In the CIHI: Measuring Health Inequalities Toolkit, it says it is possible to avoid using SAS and just get this info from the PCCF. It says the following: To assign any income quintiles using PCCF, you would assign a DA to individuals in your dataset using the PCCF, and the socioeconomic status reference file (.txt format) available in the PCCF+ package to assign (the desired) income quintiles to DAs. This seems best for us because we already have a list of every DA and the stores assigned. 

I wasn’t able to find this file in the PCCF+ v7c files. Is this file available to us or is it something that only CIHI has access to?

Answer

I’ve spoken to the PCCF team and they’ve explained the following:

 

“I believe they may be naming it incorrectly – it’s not called a ‘socioeconomic status reference file’. We do provide area-based income quintiles as part of the standard output, if the user puts in their postal codes and uses the PCCF+ as suggested. There is information about that if they check the user guide.

 

They don’t need to first assign DAs to individuals. The PCCF+ will assign the DA and provide the income quintile at the same time.”

Socio-economic data for small geographic levels

Question

A bit of a broad question, but I’m more looking for advice on how to proceed rather than references to specific datasets (though the latter are always welcome!).
I have a faculty member engaged in research looking at expectant mothers’ distance to hospitals in Canada. He is working with CIHI to obtain hospital administration data by postal code. He would also like to develop a ‘vulnerability’ factor using socio-economic variables (income, crime, education). Because it has to match the CIHI data, geography is the most important variable. I have a vague understanding that census data is not available at the DA level unless it’s aggregated. Is this true? Are there other sources I should be looking at for DA level social-economic variables?
Thanks for your help. On the plus side, more questions I can’t answer means more complex data use is happening here!


Answer
The Census BST data, including average income and various education measures, are available through the DLI at the DA level. This data can then be matched to Postal Code data through the Postal Code conversion files. Crime data is more challenging. There is a Sociology Professor here at McGill who is developing an crime index measurement for all the census tracts in Canada. He has made use of the PCensus Crime Risk Data (CAP Index), which as I remember is also at the CT level. It might be that the mapping that Professor Burgos has been doing could be of interest to your researcher.