|
|
 |
||||||||
|
|||||||||
 |
Research into Social Policy Issues – Agenda 2009
The SPEAR Centre Research Agenda for 2009 includes projects on the following topics:
This project explores the debt profile of older Australians, both those approaching Age Pension age and those already in receipt of the Age Pension, and aims to identify the factors that contribute to debt levels among these two groups. In particular, the project addresses the following specific questions:
The research addresses the following question:
We will analyse waves 1 to 7 of HILDA to look first at the patterns on and off and through different types of Australian government welfare payments by individuals and households. This will allow us to identify the extent to which these data reflect the kinds of patterns of persistence observed in administrative data (Gregory and Klug 2002). We will also look at how the incomes of individuals and households change as they move through these different welfare payments to assess whether and how this persistence view can be reconciled with results suggesting there is considerable mobility by individuals and households around the income distribution in Australia, as found in studies of poverty persistence (Headey et al. 2005, Ryan 2008 and the Melbourne Institute 2008).
This project analyses how 18–20-year-old Australians from different family backgrounds are supported economically by their parents and by the government, as well as how this support (or the lack of it) is correlated with their human capital investment decisions.
The project involves an analysis of the extent to which young people receive support from their families and how this family support is related to their educational and labour market involvement. The literature indicates that young people are increasingly dependent on their parents for support, partly as a result of changes in social policy since the 1980s. To understand how young people's situations differ and why some receive/need income support from the government, it is necessary to consider the amount of economic support they receive from their parents. This support may come in the form of co-residence or in the form of financial transfers.
The project builds on the previous SPEAR SPRS project 2007/06: The relationship between income support history and the characteristics and outcomes of Australian Youth. In the previous report, we found that parental history of reliance on income support is associated with a range of negative outcomes for young people. In particular, our findings indicated that young people who grew up in families with prolonged exposure to the income-support system (6 years or more) were significantly worse off than youths whose families had no recorded income-support history. This disadvantage was manifested in educational attainment, overall schooling experience, labour market outcomes, early fertility and family formation, and health outcomes and behaviours. On the other hand, we found no or little evidence of income-support-related differences in attitudes towards education and work and the locus of control of the young respondents.
This project will use the second wave of the Youth in Focus survey the same young people who will now be 20 years of age. While wave 1 collected the data at the time when the young respondents have only recently left school, the new data will provide more insight into the development of their educational and labour market outcomes and their transition to independent adulthood. Moreover, wave 2 gathers more detailed information on the young adults’ future expectations, health, drug use, and risk-taking attitudes.
The purpose of the current project is two-fold:
The aim of the project is to contribute to our understanding of the ‘life story’ of DSP recipients as a whole with a view to allowing identification of possible intervention points. The starting point for the analysis begins at each individual’s first contact with the income support / benefit system as an adult.
The aim of the project is to use HILDA data to contribute to our understanding of the ‘life story’ of DSP recipients, particularly related to their involvement with the labour market while on DSP and what activities they undertake if the leave DSP.
The aim of the both this project and the preceding one is to improve our the understanding of 1) the durability of employment outcomes for DSP earners and exiters; 2) the services that these people access to obtain and/or maintain employment; and 3) what impacts of the various types of employment services available actually are. Research into these questions will improve our understanding about the types of services that best suits various DSP cohorts.
The research addresses the following questions: how often do Australian children have an opportunity to play outside with their family members and visit places that might enhance their learning and which community environments are related to more frequent out-of-home learning / stimulating activities?
Previous studies on children’s development and their learning environment suggest significant association between them. For example, using the 2004 Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC), Wake et al. (2006) show that the LSAC outcome index and learning domain score are positively correlated with the level of family engagement in out-of-home activities. However, relatively little is known about which community characteristics are correlated with these out-of-home learning / stimulating activities. This study will fill this gap by investigating the relationship between neighbourhood environments and learning / stimulating activities. In particular, it will focus on out-of-home activities, the frequency of which is more likely to be affected by community facilities.
How does attrition from panel data affect our estimates of how often individuals in Australia move house? Does attrition affect the estimated relationships between the propensity to move and factors that might influence housing mobility, such as the social background of the individuals?
An important methodological issue to address is how the problem of attrition from a panel surveys, such as HILDA, affects the inferences about behaviour like the decision to change residential location. After all, analysis of an issue such as housing mobility seems one particularly susceptible to incorrect inferences arising from the impact of attrition, since mobility itself is likely to be a contributing factor in attrition. The results from this research will add to our understanding of the process of attrition and how it affects the inferences we draw, specifically in this case on the nature of housing mobility in Australia.
Provision of the course “Economics for Social Policy”.
This course of 10 two hour long classes sought to provide FaHCSIA staff with an introductory guide to basic economic principles and their application to a selected group of Australian social policy issues. This involved introducing participants to the concept of markets and analysis of the demand and supply for goods, discussion of the role of government within an economic framework and understanding the ways in which governments influence the outcomes of markets and the behaviour of individuals. Specific social policy issues addressed included poverty and inequality, the housing market, the operation of the welfare system and decision-making within families and households.
