Publications
Housing older Australians: Loss of homeownership and pathways into housing assistance
In Australia and other ‘homeownership societies’ it has been conventional to think of housing pathways in terms of a smooth linear progression, leading to outright ownership in middle age and a retirement buffered by low housing costs. This vision of... Read article

Beyond the Bottom Line: Government debt in Australia
Beyond the Bottom Line is the third report in the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre’s Focus on the States series. The report examines the highly topical and politically sensitive subject of government debt in Australia and seeks to provide a balanced... Read article

Survey self-assessments, reporting behaviour and the use of externally collected vignettes
The anchoring vignette approach has grown in popularity as a method to adjust for reporting heterogeneity in subjective self-reports, removing bias due to systematic variation in reporting styles across study respondents. The use of anchoring vignettes, however, has been limited to surveys where... Read article

Elephant poaching & ivory trafficking problems in Sub-Saharan Africa: An application of O’Hara’s principles of political economy
This paper examines the complex social problem of African elephant decimation using a political economy approach. This paper applies five principles of O’Hara’s political economy (POPE): historical specificity; circular and cumulative causation; uneven development; heterogeneous agents; and contradiction. POPE provides a practical tool... Read article

Securing our Future
Western Australia’s population is growing older. The median age of West Australians is set to increase from 36 years today to 40 years by 2050. During that time the proportion of West Australians aged 65 and over is projected to... Read article

The evolution of the gender test score gap through seventh grade
This paper documents the patterns and examines the factors contributing to a gender test score gap in five test subjects in early seventh grade of schooling using a recent and nationally representative panel of Australian children. Regression results indicate that... Read article

Care roles and employment decision-making
This article uses data from a panel of Australian mature-age women to examine the effects of care roles on workers’ intentions to leave their jobs. We focus on how the employment effects of care roles can be shaped by the... Read article

Parental health and children’s cognitive and non-cognitive development
This paper examines the effects of maternal and paternal health on cognitive and non-cognitive development in Australian children. The underlying nationally representative panel data and a child fixed effects estimator are used to overcome most of the previous cross-sectional study... Read article

The use of home equity to fund the consumption needs of retirees
This paper identifies the broad issues associated with the use of home equity to fund the consumption needs of retirees by reviewing the relevant international literature. The specific literature that examines the role of home equity in the retirement income... Read article

Making connections: housing, productivity and economic development
This is a scoping study with the immediate aim of reviewing links between housing and productivity. It uses scans of existing literature, assessments of local strategies for planning, and interviews with key practitioners involved in metropolitan and local economic development... Read article

The influence of gender on pathways into the labor market
Chapter 4: Developments in the education system and the labor market along with legislative changes over the last decades have given rise to expectations of decreasing gender inequality. First, women’s increased educational attainment, relative to that of men, is expected... Read article

Is headspace making a difference to young people’s lives?
headspace aims to improve the mental health and social and emotional wellbeing of young people in Australia through the provision of evidence-based, integrated, youth-centred and holistic services. In January 2013, the Australian Government Department of Health (DoH) commissioned a consortium... Read article
