Housing Pathways and Affordability

The rising cost of housing has been an ongoing issue in WA and nationally. House prices and rents are escalating at a rate that many households find hard to keep pace with and many young Australians continue to face severe barriers to accessing home ownership. Homelessness is also a growing concern in both regional and metropolitan areas. On the other hand, among older Australians, a major source of financial security is the wealth stored in the family home. Indeed it often represents a nest egg that can mean the difference between a modest and comfortable retirement. Projects under this research theme also delve into a range of issues related to housing affordability and housing security over the life course, and the ways in which housing assets are relied upon to fund retirement needs.

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Remote housing for Indigenous children in the Fitzroy Valley, Western Australia: A case study Michael Dockery, Erica Sykes Poor-quality and overcrowded housing in remote communities in Australia is widely seen to negatively impact Indigenous children’s health and development. Despite widespread reports of, in some instances, quite appalling housing conditions, recent analyses of data from the Longitudinal Study of... Read article 22 December 2022Journal Articles Read More
How many in a crowd? Assessing overcrowding measures in Australian housing Michael Dockery, Megan Moskos, Linda Isherwood, Mark Harris This research assesses the measurement of overcrowding in Australia and explores the relationships between various household density measures and the wellbeing of occupants. Indicators of the incidence or severity of household crowding in Australia actually measure occupant density—the ratio of... Read article 28 July 2022Research Reports Read More
BCEC Policy Briefing: Western Australia State Budget 2022-23 Alan Duncan This new BCEC Policy Brief assesses the Western Australia State Budget 2022-23 delivered by WA Premier and Treasurer Mark McGowan on 12 May. Premier McGowan took advantage of the state’s strong economic performance to hand down a measured budget that... Read article 13 May 2022Policy Insights  |  Economic Policy  |  Health and Wellbeing  |  Social Issues  |  Taxation and Welfare  |  Workforce and Skills Read More
Presentation – Behind the Line: Poverty and disadvantage in Australia 2022 Alan Duncan View the presentation by John Curtin Distinguished Professor Alan Duncan, Director of the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, from the launch of the Behind the Line: Poverty and disadvantage in Australia 2022 report on Thursday 3 March, 2022. This report, the ninth... Read article 3 March 2022Presentations Read More
Behind the Line: Poverty and disadvantage in Australia 2022 Alan Duncan This report, the ninth in the Focus on the States series, provides the latest examination of the prevalence of poverty within Australia, how this has changed over time, and which groups in society face the greatest risks of financial hardship and... Read article 2 March 2022BCEC Reports  |  Focus on The States Read More
Income inequality and housing prices in the very long-run Abebe Hailemariam, Sefa Awaworyi Churchill, Russell Smyth, Kingsley Tetteh Baako We examine the relationship between income inequality and house prices for a panel of 17 OECD countries over the period 1870 to 2015. Our identification strategy takes advantage of exogenous variation in culturally weighted communist influence to instrument for within-country... Read article 19 January 2022Journal Articles Read More