Publications

Asset poverty, precarious housing and ontological security in older age: an Australian case study Val Colic-Peisker, Rachel Ong ViforJ, Gavin Wood Over two-thirds of Australians are owner-occupiers and a majority of the population holds most of their wealth in housing. Australian taxation privileges homeowners and retirement income policy is built around the assumption that state pensions can be kept low because... Read article 13 December 2014Journal Articles Read More
Bridging the gap between housing stress and financial stress Steven Rowley, Rachel Ong ViforJ, Marietta Haffner In recent decades, housing affordability has been increasingly linked to household financial outcomes where high housing costs relative to income are perceived to negatively affect financial well-being. However, the traditional measure of housing affordability in Australia is housing stress, which... Read article 11 December 2014Journal Articles Read More
Revisiting the impact of consumption growth and inequality on poverty in Indonesia during decentralisation Riyana Miranti, Alan Duncan, Rebecca Cassells This article analyses the consumption growth elasticity and inequality elasticity of poverty in Indonesia, with a particular focus on the decentralisation period. Using provincial panel data, we show that the effectiveness of growth in alleviating poverty across provinces was greater... Read article 3 December 2014Journal Articles Read More
A Wellbeing Approach to Mobility and its Application to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians Michael Dockery This paper demonstrates that key models of human mobility across several disciplines can be considered as specific cases of a broader conceptualisation of mobility in terms of its contribution to wellbeing. It is argued that this wellbeing perspective offers important... Read article 1 December 2014Journal Articles Read More
The Mining Boom and Indigenous Labour Market Outcomes Michael Dockery Much of Western Australia’s economic development and prosperity is derived from mining activity which takes place in remote areas in which Indigenous peoples disproportionately reside, and on country over which Indigenous Australians are now legally recognised as the custodians. It... Read article 1 December 2014Books and Book Chapters Read More
Can measures of broadband infrastructure improve predictions of economic growth? Walter J. Mayer, Gary Madden, Xin Dang This paper investigates whether predictions of future economic growth can be improved by using standard measures of broadband infrastructure. The investigation is carried out by comparing the predictive accuracy of dynamic panel models of economic growth estimated with and without... Read article 30 November 2014Conference Papers Read More
Housing affordability dynamics: new insights from the last decade Gavin Wood, Rachel Ong ViforJ, Melek Cigdem This report explores the duration of housing affordability stress (HAS) in Australia. It tracks the housing affordability trajectories of Australians over the period 2001–11. The dataset employed in this project is the nationally representative Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in... Read article 30 November 2014Research Reports Read More
Housing Equity Withdrawal in mid-to-late life: Patterns and Motivations amongst Australian Homeowners Rachel Ong ViforJ, Gavin Wood, Therese Jefferson, Marietta Haffner Abstract In an era of population ageing, the primary home is increasingly viewed as a personal resource that can perform a pension role in retirement. This paper assesses the extent to which Australians aged over 45 utilise housing equity withdrawal... Read article 25 November 2014Working Papers Read More
Falling Through the Cracks Rebecca Cassells, Michael Dockery, Alan Duncan The concept of disadvantage is one that invokes a number of connotations, including poverty, exclusion and deprivation. Generally disadvantage relates to a lack of resources and opportunity to achieve a basic standard of living. A number of Australian studies have... Read article 31 October 2014Focus on The States Read More
Exploring recent increases in the gender wealth gap among Australia’s single households Rachel Ong ViforJ, Sherry Bawa, Therese Jefferson Abstract This study uses three wealth modules from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey to explore the gender wealth gap for single Australian households between 2002 and 2010. The findings indicate a significant gender wealth gap, which... Read article 17 October 2014Journal Articles Read More
Workforce and Skills Rebecca Cassells, Michael Dockery, Alan Duncan, Kenneth Leong, Astghik Mavisakalyan The resources industry has been the driving force behind Western Australia’s remarkable economic trajectory over the last two decades, delivering billions of tonnes of iron ore to steel mills around the world. WA has prospered, wages have soared and unemployment... Read article 31 August 2014Focus on WA Read More
Wellbeing outcomes of lower income renters Sharon Parkinson, Rachel Ong ViforJ, Melek Cigdem, Elizabeth Taylor Executive Summary A critical assumption of area-based policies aiming to foster greater ‘social mix’ of communities is that the adverse consequences associated with concentrations of social disadvantage will be reduced. The main vehicle to facilitate contemporary policies of social mix... Read article 31 August 2014Research Reports Read More