Deprivation: key points

The SIMD is the Scottish Government's official tool for identifying small area concentrations of multiple deprivation across all of Scotland. The SIMD provides a relative ranking of 6,976 small areas (datazones) across Scotland from the most deprived (ranked one) to the least deprived in Scotland (ranked 6,976).  Direct comparisons of indicators between all releases are not possible because of changes to datazone boundaries.

The main measure of deprivation used in Scotland is the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD).  The SIMD was first published by the Scottish Government in 2004. Successive revisions were published in 2004, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2016 and 2020, which is the most recent version of the index.

The following points are summarised from the results of the most recent (2020) version of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD).  

Key findings reported for SIMD 2020 include: 

• Deprivation in Highlands and Islands: None of the 15% most deprived areas of Scotland are in Shetland, Orkney or the Western Isles
• Persistent Deprivation: Fourteen small areas have remained in the 5% most deprived places in Scotland since the first SIMD release in 2004. Nine of these are in Glasgow City.  
• Council areas in the Central Belt: Glasgow City and Edinburgh council areas have both experienced substantial (2% or more) falls in deprivation scores from SIMD 2016 to SIMD 2020, whereas most neighbouring council areas along the Central Belt have experienced substantial (2% or more) increases in deprivation scores over the same period.