Productive Australia in the World Economy
Convenor: Andrew Leigh
Description | Events | Projects | Grants | Visitors
The wealth of any nation resides in its citizens’ flexibility, skills, talent, and knowledge. Fostering the productive skills of the population and designing institutions to allow these skills to be used efficiently and equitably are central to Australia’s – or indeed any country’s – ability to sustain an increasing standard of
living. The theme includes four components —
Participation and Equity
How do institutions affect labour market outcomes? How will immigration and ageing affect developed nations? What affects the economic participation of income-support recipients? How does imperfect competition affect labour markets? What do we know about inequality and social mobility, and how government policies affect these outcomes? How can we improve the life chances of Indigenous Australians?
Knowledge and Health
Can we improve educational productivity through different systems of school and higher education financing, or improving teacher quality? How should we evaluate educational reform? What are the major issues in work-related training and lifelong learning? How do physical and mental health outcomes interact with economic and social participation?
Economic and Social Institutions
How should we evaluate immigration policy, income-support policy, and Indigenous policy? What is the conceptual basis for government fi nancial intervention? Can we apply different funding models for government investment, including in areas of maternity leave, child care and aged care?
Economic Growth and Public Policy
What are the major issues in productivity growth within firms and across economies? What microeconomic factors affect industry development? What should be the role of government in the provision of infrastructure? What constitutes optimal macroeconomic policy? How does regulation affect market efficiency? What drives research and innovation in firms?
Events
Conferences
12 March 2009
The Economics of Child Care
Further information: Academics | Non Academics
25-26 April 2008
11th Australasian Labour Econometrics Workshop
19-20 June 2008
New Techniques in Development Economics
8-10 December 2008
Economics and Democracy
Past Conferences
28-29 November 2007
ANU Economics Showcase
Speakers will include some of the University’s ‘star’ economists, plus early career researchers. The conference will bring together economists across ANU, including from the College of Business and Economics, College of Asia and the Pacific and the College of Arts and Social Sciences. Further details.
5 February 2007
The Economics of Teacher Quality
Speakers included: Eric Hanushek (Stanford), Jonah Rockoff (Columbia) and Hamilton Lankford (University at Albany). Full program.
30 November and 1 December 2006
An International Perspective on Immigration and Immigration Policy
Speakers included: David Card (University of California Berkeley), Christian Dustmann (University College London) and Barry Chiswick (University of Illinois). Full program.
2 November 2006
Inequality in Australia
Speakers: Christopher Jencks (Harvard), Peter Saunders (University of New South Wales) and Bob Gregory (ANU). Full program.
Seminars
28 May 2007
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Indigenous Crime
Speakers: Jennifer Clarke (College of Law), Boyd Hunter (College of Arts and Social Sciences), Tim Rowse (College of Arts and Social Sciences). Moderator: Peter Radoll (Director, Jabal Indigenous Higher Education Centre).
30 April 2007
The End of Monetarism
Presenter: William Coleman (College of Business and Economics). Discussant: David Gruen (Australian Treasury)
Projects
Usage of child care by child support customers
This research examines child care usage patterns of child support payers and payees in order to:
- provide baseline information for determining child care usage by Child Support customers prior to the implementation of reforms to the Child Support Scheme;
- provide Australian estimates of child care usage to feed into policy development around models, which may assist in assessing changes to child support amounts, associated with high child care costs;
- identify how patterns might change over time post reform, as this will provide input to updates of the cost of children calculations that underpin the formula; and
- provide information to feed into policy development to cater for parents with greater than average child care costs.
The research will analyse the following questions:
- What are the patterns of child care usage and type and the costs of the different types of child care for child support customers?
- How do patterns of child care differ in relation to different levels of care arrangements (e.g. shared care, full care, etc.), and on average do child support customers use child care more or less often than other parents?
- How do different child support entitlements relate to different patterns of child care?
- What effects do child care costs have on workforce participation of child support customers?
Patterns of care post separation – the impact of the Child Support Scheme
This research will analyse the following questions:
- What are the patterns of ‘regular contact’ and ‘shared care’ between post-separated parents who are child support customers?
- What factors encourage agreement on ‘regular contact’ and ‘shared care’ and what factors hinder this agreement?
- What are the levels of conflict for parents with different care arrangements and what are the factors associated with high conflict?
- Are there any differences in outcomes for children with different levels of contact and for those living in high or low conflict arrangements?
A structural model of the effect of child care arrangements on children’s developmental outcomes
This project aims to investigate causal links between the mode and the intensity of care and children’s development in Australia. To this end we are building and estimating a structural model using LSAC data over the next two years.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the early childhood experience is vital to children’s development and their success later in life. A significant feature of early childhood is child care. Researchers are currently trying to understand the effect of child care on children’s development. While the debate continues, a consensus seems to emerge that non-parental child care can be beneficial for children’s development, provided the care is of “high quality”. In this research we propose to investigate causal links between the mode and the intensity of care (child care hours) on the one hand and children’s development on the other. The bulk of empirical evidence today is gathered in other countries. Since the quality of child care in Australia is relatively high in comparison with other countries, it is not clear that international results are applicable in Australia. It is therefore important to consider the Australian case directly.So, the aim of this project is to investigate causal links between the mode and the intensity of care and children’s development in Australia.
Factors influencing fertility goals and patterns over time
This projects attempts to answer the following research questions: How do fertility patterns change over time, and what factors are associated with these changes? Why do people’s fertility intentions change over time or what prevents them from meeting their fertility goals?
Using HILDA data, we will explore the role of the following factors in influencing fertility plans and the extent to which they will be achieved:
- education, socio-economic and employment status;
- geographic factors (urban vs rural);
- macro-economic factors;
- financial security, including job stability, costs of housing and education;
- relationship formation and stability (including length of time between relationship formation and first child, length of time between first child and subsequent child/ren),
- work environment, including gender equity and family friendliness;
community supports; and - social and personal preferences, and
- differences between women and men.
- A particular issue of interest are factors associated with having a particular number of children (eg. Having only one child, having two children, three children or more).
Informal care and labour market participation
This project examines the affect of caring on labour market participation.
Many Australians provide care to older relatives and people with a disability. In 2003, 2.5 million people (16% of the population aged 15 years and over) provided such care to 2.1 million people (ABS Social Trends 2005).
Since a significant portion of informal care is provided by people of working age, an important policy question is to understand how caring affects labour market participation. According to ABS data, 21% of primary carers were employed part-time and 17% full-time. Some respondents say that their caring duties were the main reason they left the labour market.
In this project, we are using panel data to look at the association between changes in caring for the elderly or disabled, and changes in labour force participation. We also propose to look at whether an increase in caring obligations is associated with a change in self-reported life satisfaction.
The relationship between income support history and the characteristics and outcomes of Australian youth
This project investigates young people’s characteristics and outcomes in relation to the income support history for the family. The research takes advantage of new survey data collected as part of the Youth in Focus project to assess the relationship between a young person’s characteristics and outcomes on the one hand and the income support history of his or her family on the other. In particular, we are interested in the following questions:
- How do the characteristics of young people vary by income support history?
- Do the labour market and educational outcomes of young people vary with the extent to which their families accessed the income support system as they were growing up?
- Is health—i.e., self-assessed health, health behaviours, etc.—related to income support history?
- How are youths’ attitudes towards education, work, and income support related to their experiences of the income support system?
This research will provide a broad picture of the ways in which income support histories might matter for young people and will be important identifying the most important areas for future research. Moreover, this exercise will be fundamental to developing a deeper understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the Youth in Focus Survey data themselves.
This will be a descriptive analysis of the survey data arising from the Youth in Focus project. As such, it will provide a foundation for identifying the key research areas to be pursued in the future. It will result in a broad overview of the ways in which income support histories affect the outcomes of young people.
Measurement of income mobility
This project looks at the question of how much of the apparent year-to-year mobility in income in Australia is based on real changes in the incomes of individuals and how much on ‘noise’ in the measurement of income.
There are good reasons for expecting individuals to move around the income distribution from year-to-year. These include: changes in employment status; changes in the jobs of those employed, including promotion; improved job performance and consequent higher wages associated with increased experience; changes in living arrangements associated with lifecycle factors, such as partnering and family formation; transitions from study to the full-time workforce; variation in the return on financial assets from year to year; and health shocks, among other factors. The impacts of these factors vary in the extent to which they are ‘permanent’ or ‘temporary’, but constitute ‘real’ sources mobility in income from year-to-year. Measurement error might arise where individuals guess their income, or round their income to nearby aggregates (say the nearest ‘000) or deliberately and/or systematically over- or understate their reports from year to year. While this error does not contribute to true income mobility, it may act to inflate artificially measured income mobility.
The research aims to estimate what part of the variance in the change in income from year-to-year that arises from measurement error. This estimate can then be used to estimate the contribution to apparent income of measurement error via simulation methods. Data from the first five waves of HILDA will be used to do this.
Does fertility respond to child care benefits in Australia?
This project investigates the impact of the Child Care Benefits (CCB) on fertility of Australians , using micro-data at the individual and the household levels. This study builds on our 2006 research project designed to explore how fertility responds to income incentives provided by child-related schemes in Australia, where we found that Australians do adjust their birth decisions in reaction to public programs that offer financial incentives associated with children. Thus, the CCB, as another principal family support scheme in Australia, may also stimulate fertility by reducing the cost , though indirectly, of raising children , especially for women who would also like to participate in labour market.
Disparities in children’s outcomes
This project investigates characteristics of groups of children showing different developmental outcomes.
It looks at the question of which groups of children face developmental and social problems. Whilst it is recognized that Australia’s health, education and social systems are effective for the majority of children, there is rising concern over the most vulnerable and at risk groups for whom these systems may not work so well. For example, childhood disabilities, child abuse and neglect, psychological and psychosocial conditions remain problems for today’s Australian children, which appear to be associated with social adversity. Evidence on the prevalence and distribution of these problems among Australian children is crucial in informing policy development about targeting and funding. By analysing the distribution of these problems using a rich and representative dataset, this study aims to contribute to the policy discussion.
Explaining changes in the number of children in lone parent families
This project examines the changes over time of numbers of children living in families reliant on government income assistance.
Longitudinal Data Set (LDS) data indicate that the trend increase in the number of lone mothers on low incomes has continued since the mid 1990s, increasing by 132,000 or 48 per cent between 1995 and 2005. In the eighteen months following June 2005, and for the first time in two and half decades, there has been a remarkable change. The number has fallen 38,000. What explains this strong trend growth and the sudden change? This project is directed towards answering this question.
The project will:
- investigate changes in the characteristics of lone parents over the last twelve years to document the source of growth and trend reversal.
- explore whether the growth in the number of lone parents and the trend reversal was generated primarily by changes in the rate of inflows to income support or changes in the length of stay on income support.
- explain why the changes have occurred with special emphasis on the recent trend reversal in the number of lone parents
- assess the economic, social and policy implications of the recent trend reversal.
Do neighborhood resources matter? Accessibility and availability of childcare
Accessible and affordable childcare is an important factor in achieving the goal of balancing work and child-rearing. This project will estimate how the number of childcare places (capacity), staff-child ratio (quality), and hourly fee (cost) are associated with changes in the likelihood that families perceive difficulties in finding a place at the childcare centre of their choice, finding good quality childcare, dealing with the cost of childcare, and finding care during school holidays. More detailed measures of capacity, quality, and cost of childcare may be integrated into the analysis. Investigating the impact of these perceived difficulties could shed light on the causes behind the actual behavioural decisions on labour force participation and childcare utilization.
Grants
Australian Research Council Discovery grant - publication
In 2001 the Australian Research Council awarded a grant for research into Public Policy Immigrant Settlement to Dr Deborah Cobb-Clark of The SPEAR Centre, and Dr S. E. Khoo of The Australian Centre for Population Research. The results of this research appeared in 2006 in a 264 page book “Public Policy and Immigrant Settlement”, edited by Deborah Cobb-Clark and Siew-Ean Khoo, and published by Edward Elgar. This book examines the role of immigration policy, and of economic and social policies in promoting the settlement of immigrants to Australia. It is based on research on two groups of recent immigrants who arrived six years apart during the 1990s holding a range of visas including family reunion, skilled and humanitarian visas. Contributors include B.R. Chiswick, D.A. Cobb-Clark, T. Gørgens, S. Kennedy, S.-E. Khoo, A.T. Le, J.T. McDonald, P.W. Miller, P.J. Thapa.
ARC Linkage Grant
The Intergenerational Transmission of Dependence on Income Support: Patterns, Causation and Implications for Australian Social Policy Research is a 5-year ARC Linkage Grants-funded project in which the ANU is working with the Australian Government Department of Family and Community Services. The researchers on this project are Dr Deborah Cobb-Clark, Dr Robert Breunig, Dr Tue Gørgens of the Australian National University, Professor Jeff Borland of the University of Melbourne, and Professors Robert Haveman and Barbara Wolfe of The University of Wisconsin. The aim of this project is to examine the consequences of growing up in an income-support family. The first stage will describe the relationship between parents’ and children’s income-support receipt to determine whether these children are more likely to access income-support programs themselves. Stage 2 will identify the causal mechanisms through which parental income-support receipt influences children’s outcomes. Identification of these transmission mechanisms is a necessary first step in formulating policies targeted towards breaking any cycle of welfare dependence. This project is innovative in its use of survey data merged to unique administrative data that link the income-support records of some 53,000 young Australians and their parents . A pilot for the study, which will involve surveying approximately 2,000 Australian youths and parents, is scheduled for mid-2005.
Visitors
2008
Robert Fairlie, University of California, Santa Cruz, 7 December 2007 - 31 January 2008
Allan Wurtz, University of Aarhus, 7-25 January 2008
Rebecca Brown, The Treasury, 29 January-September 2008
Philip Clarke, University of Sydney, January-10 February; 15 April - tbc, 2008
Chris Skeels, University of Melbourne, 7-14 January 2008
Robert Haveman, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 9 January-14 February 2008
Bobbi Wolfe, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 9 January-14 February 2008
Lixin Cai, Melbourne Institute, February-July 2008
Michael Baker, University of Toronto, 25 February-14 March 2008
Francesca Cornaglia, Queen Mary, University of London/LSE, 10-31 March 2008
David Prentice, Latrobe University, 24 March-4 April 2008
Jeffrey Williamson, Harvard University, 29 March-6 May 2008
Myoung-jae Lee, Korea University, 17-27 April 2008
Leah Brooks, McGill University, April 2008
Robert Schoeni, University of Michigan, 11-17 May 2008
David Gray, University of Ottowa, early-20 June 2008
Steven Haider, Michigan State University, 10 August-15 December 2008
Lee Alston, University of Colorado at Boulder, August-October 2008 (8-12 wks)
Alan Hamlin, University of Manchester, October-November-December 2008
Christian Dustmann, University College London, December 2008
Victor Lavy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, week to be confirmed, 2008
2007
Rob Fairlie, University of California Santa Cruz, December 2007-January 2008
David Neumark, University of California Irvine, August 2007
Jonah Rockoff, Columbia University, February 2007
Continuing Visitors
Michael Keating
Emeritus Prof John Pitchford
Dr Peter Stemp