Melbourne’s richest and poorest suburbs: how your area compares (2024)

Cremorne and East Melbourne are the most advantaged suburbs in Victoria, while Dallas, Coolaroo and Broadmeadows are the most disadvantaged in Melbourne.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics rankings, released on Thursday, are based on the latest Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA), compiled using data from the 2021 census.

The list of the most advantaged suburbs is dominated by locations in Melbourne’s inner east, such as Toorak, Brighton and Malvern.

Using the map below, you can see the pockets of advantage and disadvantage in Melbourne. The most disadvantaged suburbs are coloured dark red, and the most advantaged areas are dark blue.

Each suburb has been given a score from one to 10, with one being most disadvantaged and 10 most advantaged.

While there are vast swathes of advantaged suburbs in metropolitan Melbourne, suburbs in rural and regional Victoria are generally worse off.

Caroline Deans, head of the 2021 census data at the bureau, said the SEIFA index of advantage and disadvantage was based on 23 variables from the 2021 census, with the most weight given to income level, type of occupation, employment status and educational attainment.

She said the index simplified the data into one measure.

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”When researchers are doing their analysis, they can see quite clearly the most disadvantaged or advantaged local government areas or suburbs,” Deans said.

She said that researchers had combined SEIFA data from previous censuses with other area-based data sets, on topics such as poker machine spending, breastfeeding rates, or availability of legal assistance services, to gauge whether there were connections with disadvantage.

But Deans said it was important to note that there could be a few extremely well-off households living in an area where more people are disadvantaged, and vice versa.

Nationwide, the top-ranking area for advantage was the beachside Sydney suburb of Tamarama. New South Wales had nine of the top-ranked areas for advantage, with the suburb of Dalkeith in Perth being the only place from elsewhere in Australia to make it into the top 10.

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