16 December 2010

Your Canberra postcode reveals your income

16 December 2010 | Jivrashia

Hi rioters.

This is in response to the recent post Follow the money – Canberra postcodes mapped for wealth.

In the thread the question was asked

Are there other maps which illustrate other aspects of “wealth” apart from “investment habits” such as income, assets, etc.?

Actually, I was also curious as there are perceptions in Canberrans’ mind of which suburbs are well-off and which are not, but with little to no facts to confirm it. And Coogle search returns very little in terms of a similar “wealth” map. However, the figures are available on the Australian Bureau of Statistics site, so it was just a matter of someone (me, I guess) taking the time to collect them, collate them, and make sense of them.

So. I started by

Visiting the ABS’s National Regional Profile site here.
Clicking on a suburb then on “Get Data”.
Clicking on “Economy”.

The data used are under the section “Taxation Statistics – year ended 30 June”

Taxable and non-taxable individuals
Average taxable income (taxable and non-taxable individuals)

A non-taxable individual is someone who holds a tax file number but their annual net income falls below the tax free threshold. These may be pensioners, people receiving other welfare benefits, or the unemployed. So one could assume that a suburb housing a lot of retirees will have downward pressure on the average annual income figure.

The taxable and non-taxable individuals excludes those who do not have a TFN, such as children, students, and house husbands/wives. Generally, anyone who had not fill out a tax return because they received no income or welfare benefit.

The 2008 income data was adjusted by the Labour Price Index to guesstimate a 2010 value.

The postcode 2601 (Acton, City) is a bit of mystery. I can’t explain why my data came out as low income earners.

Obviously as this is a 2008 data it does not take into account the new suburbs, such as Franklin and Harrison (2912) with their high income households.

The spreadsheet of the collated data can be found here. It contains MOST SUBURBS.

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26048:53 pm 20 Dec 10

No, not everyone wants modern houses, or roundabouts instead of endless stop signs and traffic lights. But the idea that those things add up to a “ghetto” (or that there’s no element of snobbery in the whole Inner North v Gungahlin thing) is bullshit.

Kerryhemsley9:19 am 20 Dec 10

2604 said :

beejay76 said :

I’m from Gungahlin area, commonly called a ghetto by many RA/ inner north folks.

My advice is to ignore such derogatory Inner North folks, who should really get a life. They are likely to be people:
– who paid through the nose for decrepit 1950s/60s housing when they could’ve paid $100,000 less for a more modern house ten minutes further out from town, or
– who are paying big rents to live in those houses, which makes even less sense.

The reason such people hate Gungahlin or Tuggers is lack of cachet. However, judging a place’s worth as a place to live by the presence or absence of cachet is for people with more money than sense. I’m sure Gungahlin is a fine place to live, and if you like it and are comfortable there then that’s all that you should worry about.

Yeah funnily enough not everyone wants a modern house or even a Mcmansion. Or a roundabout on every corner. Nothing to do with cachet as you call it.

26044:33 pm 19 Dec 10

beejay76 said :

I’m from Gungahlin area, commonly called a ghetto by many RA/ inner north folks.

My advice is to ignore such derogatory Inner North folks, who should really get a life. They are likely to be people:
– who paid through the nose for decrepit 1950s/60s housing when they could’ve paid $100,000 less for a more modern house ten minutes further out from town, or
– who are paying big rents to live in those houses, which makes even less sense.

The reason such people hate Gungahlin or Tuggers is lack of cachet. However, judging a place’s worth as a place to live by the presence or absence of cachet is for people with more money than sense. I’m sure Gungahlin is a fine place to live, and if you like it and are comfortable there then that’s all that you should worry about.

beejay769:09 am 19 Dec 10

Your prejudices are showing dude. Tuggeranong Town Centre is high at 44.3 crimes per ‘000 residents, but Civic (60.3 per thousand) and the Woden town centre (44.9) are just as bad.

Not too prejudiced, just appalled. Haven’t really been in Canberra long enough to develop major prejudices yet. Perhaps give me a bit longer. 😉

I’m from Gungahlin area, commonly called a ghetto by many RA/ inner north folks. I had assumed that Gungahlin and Tuggers would have similar rates given that they often seemed to be lumped together. But as you rightly point out, Tuggers and Woden should be grouped together with their 40’s rates, and Gungahlin, with a crime rate of 3.6 is not only much lower than Tuggers and Woden, but significantly lower than most of the inner north. And Civic is what you would expect, really. High crime, a lot of assault. Charming.

Wonder why Gungahlin has such a bad reputation? I’m sure someone here can enlighten me!

260410:18 pm 18 Dec 10

beejay76 said :

Also interesting are the crime stats from ACT Policing.
http://www.police.act.gov.au/community-safety/crime-statistics.aspx

Check out Tuggeranong Town Centre! If it’s not tied down….

Your prejudices are showing dude. Tuggeranong Town Centre is high at 44.3 crimes per ‘000 residents, but Civic (60.3 per thousand) and the Woden town centre (44.9) are just as bad.

georgesgenitals7:18 am 18 Dec 10

XO_VSOP said :

NoAddedMSG said :

The 2601 area includes a lot of students in residential accommodation, which will have skewed the income stats.

4.5 million for the top of the artapartments may make a difference, as floor by floor of this development does 😉

I can’t believe people would pay that much in Canberra. Especially when you look at what you can buy in other parts of Australia and the world for that amount.

beejay763:44 pm 17 Dec 10

Also interesting are the crime stats from ACT Policing.
http://www.police.act.gov.au/community-safety/crime-statistics.aspx

Check out Tuggeranong Town Centre! If it’s not tied down….

Kerryhemsley9:32 am 17 Dec 10

Chief Ten Beers said :

Now map this data to the 2010 election results by suburb and I bet there is a link.

Not sure that works in Canberra.

eh_steve8:07 am 17 Dec 10

Released in 2008, the Canberra Social Atlas is a product released by the ABS based on the 2006 census data.

It includes all of this information as well as the proportion of people who catch public transport to work by suburb, employment figures, people who do volunteer work, people who work interstate (mostly QBN), and many other interesting categories all presented in the same colourful map format.

You can read it here, http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/F084CC2518A2F7C3CA25740E0079DE65/$File/20308_2006.pdf

edglass7:42 am 17 Dec 10

Hey, 2620 is looking pretty lean in white. Anything we should read into that?

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