Jarman score
The Jarman score was developed in the 1980s primarily as a measure of General Practice workload (and as part of the calculation of deprivation payments to GPs). The Jarman score combined responses from GPs about their workload with eight census variables:
elderly living alone
% children under 5
% unskilled workers
% overcrowded households
% changed address in last year
% residents living in a household where the head was born in the New Commonwealth or Pakistan
% unemployed
% households containing lone parents
The greater the positive score, the poland rcs data more deprived – and in need of primary medical care – the resident population of a ward were. The Jarman score has not been recalculated since the 2001 Census.
The score was not originally intended to be used to measure deprivation, but became, over time, a proxy score in some cases.
It can be argued that there is a weakness in the Townsend and Carstairs approaches around the inclusion of non-car ownership.
In heavily urbanised areas with good public transport provision (and often poor provisioning for affordable parking), especially most parts of London, many people consciously choose not to own a car irrespective of economic background. Conversely, in rural areas and those with limited public transport options, access to a car is more or less essential – people with limited means may have to sacrifice other expenditure to allow for purchase and running of a motor vehicle.
While Townsend and Carstairs scores have always been calculated in the same way, societal changes may mean that there are issues of comparability over time.