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Conceptualising and Measuring Spatial Indicators of Employment Through a Liveability Lens

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Abstract

Employment is a well-known social determinant of health and wellbeing and important for the liveability of a region. Yet, spatial data are rarely used to understand barriers and facilitators of accessing employment within a city. Therefore it remains challenging to plan cities that provide equitable opportunities for urban job seekers. This paper sought to: (1) identify urban planning and neighbourhood spatial attributes that facilitate access to employment; (2) conceptualise how neighbourhood attributes that facilitate accessible urban employment may be related to health and wellbeing behaviours and outcomes; and (3) isolate potentially important neighbourhood-level spatial measures that policy-makers and planners could use to assess urban employment accessibility. A conceptual framework was developed through a social determinants of health lens, where more upstream (e.g., neighbourhood attributes) and more downstream (e.g., behaviours, intermediate outcomes) determinants of urban employment were identified in relation to long-term health and social outcomes of interest. Six potential neighbourhood spatial measures of employment were identified. These were classified into measures of: access to employment (n = 4), local employment (n = 1), and neighbourhood employment level (n = 1). The spatial measures proposed rely on routinely collected administrative datasets existing within Australia (i.e., census data); therefore can be replicated over time and data are available nationally. Together, this research identified a suite of potential (and readily available) spatial measures that can be used to assess selected neighbourhood attributes as they relate to urban employment access. Such spatial measures can be used to inform future planning decisions that integrate policies across multiple sectors, thereby improving employment accessibility in an urban context.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the NHMRC Centre for Excellence in Healthy Liveable Communities (No. 1061404) and The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre (TAPPC) (the latter is supported by NHMRC, ACT Health, NSW Health, the Australian National Preventive Health Agency (ANPHA), the Hospitals Contribution Fund of Australia (HCF) and the HCF Research Foundation). BGC is supported by an NHMRC Principal Research Fellow Award (No. 1004900). All authors are in part, supported by VicHealth.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. McCaughey VicHealth Centre for Community Wellbeing, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, Level 5, 207 Bouverie Street, Parkville, Melbourne, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Hannah Badland, Melanie Davern, Karen Villanueva, Suzanne Mavoa, Allison Milner, Rebecca Roberts & Billie Giles-Corti

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  1. Hannah Badland
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  2. Melanie Davern
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  3. Karen Villanueva
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  4. Suzanne Mavoa
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  5. Allison Milner
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  6. Rebecca Roberts
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  7. Billie Giles-Corti
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Correspondence to Hannah Badland.

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Badland, H., Davern, M., Villanueva, K. et al. Conceptualising and Measuring Spatial Indicators of Employment Through a Liveability Lens. Soc Indic Res 127, 565–576 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-015-0978-6

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