Residential areas in Denmark

When data for residential areas in Denmark were constructed for the first time in 2005, for the period 1985-2004, it received a positive response from social scientists and the Ministry of Housing, Urban and Rural Affairs. Residential area data is the precondition to be able to measure the socioeconomic and ethnic composition for each residential area. Such measures are used in research projects for measurement of the extent to which high-income groups live spatially segregated from low-income groups and study the influence of the residential area’s socioeconomic and ethnic composition for the inequality in the society, moving patterns, housing prices and voting behaviour. To make sure that social scientists can use newer data in their research projects, new residential areas in Denmark are now being produced for the period 1985-2015.

Time period:	1985-2015
Target group:	Social scientists at AU, SFI and Rockwool Foundation Research Unit.
Research:	In 2005 Anna Piil Damm and Marie Louise Schultz-Nielsen worked together with the consultancy firm Geomatic to consolidate all inhabited hectare cells into residential areas for the entire Danish population for the period 1985-2004. The residential areas reflect the geographical area within which each resident has most contact to the others residents. The residential areas are – contrary to minor administrative divisions such as parishes and school districts – unchanged over time and homogenous in population size. Following, these residential area data have been used in many scientific articles and books. This led to a number of researchers at ECON and POL. SCIENCE at AU and SFI wanting residential area data for the entire period, 1985-2015, for new research projects. Therefore, the project group have produced residential area data for 1985-2015 in cooperation with SFI, which can be used in new research projects. Residential area data are for example used in projects to control for local differences in the neighbourhoods.
Partners:	SFI and Rockwool Foundation Research Unit.
Results:	These residential area data will be used in a number of new social science research projects and also the elective course Real Estate Economics in the HA/BScB program at Aarhus BSS, a new elective course Housing Economics at the oecon-study, Aarhus BSS, and in future Master’s theses regarding the Danish housing market at Aarhus BSS.