| Abstract: | There have been many studies of regional well-being in Australia, but few match the range of variables and spatial detail employed in this paper. Twenty two socio-economic variables were drawn from the 1986 census and used to classify all 148 Commonwealth electorates. Two procedures were adopted, both based on a principal components analysis, and compared to test the robustness of the classifications generated The first approach summed factor scores to provide a status index, and the second employed Ward's clustering algorithm. The resultant groupings are seen to both complement and reinforce each other and indicate the complex and often subtle variations in well-being across the country. |
