A typology of socio-economic advantage and disadvantage in Australia's large non-metropolitan cities, towns and regions

Australia's large regional cities and towns display a wide variation in their adjustment to the socio-economic transitions that have occurred over the past decade. In terms of socio-economic advantage and disadvantage, these changes, often associated with globalisation, wider economic and technological restructuring, the changing demographics of the population and shifts in public policy, are not evenly dispersed across non-metropolitan regions. Such outcomes have been discussed across a variety of academic disciplines using a variety of data and methods, and the research undertaken has provided a useful grounding for contemporary studies both theoretically and methodologically. Analysis of new data provides an opportunity to extend and update our understanding. This paper presents an analysis of secondary data aimed at analysing non-metropolitan cities, towns and regions based on differential levels of socio-economic performance. Using an alternative clustering method, this paper groups non-metropolitan cities, towns and regions according to the degree to which they share similar socio-economic and demographic outcomes. These clusters form the basis of a typology representing the range of socio-economic and demographic outcomes at the non-metropolitan level.