Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD) 2025 results report - Introduction

About WIMD

The Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (WIMD) is the official measure of relative deprivation for small areas in Wales. It identifies areas with the highest concentrations of several different types of deprivation. WIMD ranks all small areas from 1 (most deprived) to 1,917 (least deprived). It is an accredited official statistic produced by statisticians at the Welsh Government.

WIMD is used by Welsh Government and other government bodies, local government and Public Service Boards, academics and students, as well as the third sector and private sector. The purpose of the index is to provide evidence about the most deprived areas of Wales to inform a variety of decisions and research, including funding or targeting of programmes and services for local areas. 

This release updates WIMD 2019, but some changes (explained below) mean WIMD 2025 outputs are not directly comparable to previous indices.

We are grateful for the contributions of many people and organisations who have provided data and advice for WIMD 2025.

Being deprived does not just mean being poor, it can also mean having fewer resources and opportunities than we might expect in our society, for example in terms of health, education or access to services. WIMD is made up of 8 separate domains (or types) of deprivation, each compiled from a range of different indicators. The index adds up deprivation scores from the different domains, but some domains are given more weight than others meaning they contribute more to the overall index. 

The domains and their WIMD 2025 weights 

• Income, 22%.
• Employment, 20%.
• Health, 15%.
• Education, 14%.
• Access to services, 10%.
• Housing, 9%.
• Community safety, 5%.
• Physical environment, 5%.

There are 3 main components of the index: 

• the 54 underlying indicator datasets
• ranks for the 8 separate domains (or types) of deprivation, created by combining relevant indicators within each domain
• overall WIMD ranks, created by combining the domain ranks 

All these components are calculated for each of the Lower layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in Wales. The boundaries of LSOAs are produced by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) following each census and are a standard statistical geography used for reporting small area statistics. A full list of the indicators can be found in the final background chapter. 

The way the indicators and domains are combined is designed to reliably distinguish between areas at the most deprived end of the distribution, but not at the least deprived end. This means that differences between the least deprived areas are less well defined than differences between the more deprived areas.

There is no definitive threshold above which an area is described as ‘deprived’. WIMD ranks are often grouped into deciles, quintiles or other groups for analysis purposes. Deciles split a set of data into 10 equal parts, and quintiles into 5. The first decile is the lowest 10% of values, the second decile is the next 10%, and so on. Deprivation groups used within this report are designed to have smaller groups at the more deprived end of the distribution, where the difference between areas is greater than at the less deprived end. 

The methodology is broadly the same as for previous indices, with the same 8 domains or types of deprivation captured. However some new datasets, methodologies and geographies have been used to produce WIMD 2025, meaning outputs are not directly comparable to previous indices.

New indicators

• Housing: inability to afford to enter owner occupation or the private rental market.
• Housing: dwellings with poor energy performance.
• Access to services: travel times to childcare services.
• Physical environment: noise pollution.

Main changes to existing indicators

• Income: indicator reviewed due to rollout of Universal Credit (UC).
• Employment: as above, and now includes those not working due to caring responsibilities.
• Education: absenteeism split into primary and secondary stages, small change to qualifications indicator.
• Access to services: new approach to calculating average travel times and some changes to location data sources.
• Physical environment: new data source for ambient green space, and some changes to what’s included as a green space in the proximity measure.
• Community safety: police recorded violent crime split into sub-indicators with some changes to offence codes, and most crime rate denominators now include non-resident daytime population.

Indicators no longer included

These two indicators have been removed from the index for WIMD 2025 as updated datasets are not available, these are: 

• education domain, Foundation Phase average point score
• education domain, Key Stage 2 average point score

Changes to domain weighting

The addition of 2 new indicators in the housing domain has led to a small increase in its weight from 7% to 9%. To allow for this, the weight for the employment domain has been reduced slightly from 22% to 20%.

Changes to geographies

The ONS reviewed LSOA boundaries after the release of Census 2021 data, and there are now 1,917 LSOAs instead of the previous 1,909 for WIMD 2019. 

What WIMD can be used for

• Identifying the most deprived small areas.
• Comparing relative deprivation of small areas.
• Exploring the 8 types of deprivation for small areas.
• Comparing the proportion of small areas within a larger area that are very deprived.
• Using some indicator data (but not ranks) to compare absolute change over time.

WIMD can also be used to look at the change in relative deprivation ranks between iterations, for example which areas have left, joined or remained in the most deprived group. However, care should be taken in interpreting changes in rank due to changes in the way the index is calculated between different publications. 

For WIMD 2025, to produce the best possible snapshot of relative deprivation using the latest available data, we have changed some of the indicators and domain weights. These improvements to the measurement of deprivation may have contributed to an area becoming more (or less) deprived relative to others, as well as underlying shifts in deprivation since WIMD 2019.

What WIMD can’t be used for

• Quantifying how deprived a small area is, or how much more than another (the difference between two ranks can be tiny or large).
• Using ranks to infer absolute change over time (as they are relative measures).
• Identifying deprived people (not everyone who is deprived lives in a deprived area).
• Comparing with other UK countries (each country measures deprivation slightly differently).
• Measuring affluence (lack of deprivation is not the same as being affluent).

The guidance report contains more information about what WIMD measures, interpreting the results, and the uses and limitations of WIMD. The technical report contains more information about the methodology and construction of the index, including each of the indicators within each domain. There is more information available on what we are publishing and when.

WIMD is typically updated every 5 years, but the dates of publication for future indices have not yet been scheduled.