Improving health outcomes for populations and for people.

Socioeconomic position (SEP) can be an important determinant for health. It can be assessed by different measures that look at factors such as occupation, education, income, living standards or area of residence—none of which capture the full picture. Our lead article compares the performance of five measures in predicting health outcomes, concluding that NZiDep (an individual-level index of social deprivation), and ELSI, an index of living standards, are the best predictors, and NZDep (obtained from geocoded addresses) is a reasonable alternative when impractical to use individual measures.1 In his guest editorial, Professor Tony Blakely explores the two main reasons for considering SEP: to adjust for it as a confounder, and to determine the association of a socioeconomic factor with a given health outcome.2 For the former, he concludes the best approach is to adjust for NZDep and as many other factors as possible, and for the latter, NZiDep is a robust measure.