Income Contingent Loans (ICLs) have a long history in labour economics. Indeed, Australian labour economists have played a seminal role in the conceptual development of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) in Australia – a process which demonstrated how such policies can overcome...

Carers have, on average, a more tenuous and weaker attachment to the labour market than non-carers because they face a complex set of demands on their time and must balance the needs of other people. Accordingly, it is plausible that regional shocks from droughts may adversely affect carers...

An essential policy issue for the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme is to project the likely future demand for places. This paper revisits previous estimates of such demand with the aim of adjusting these to account for subsequent increase in CDEP employment and to...

This paper examines recent evidence on Indigenous social exclusion and attempts to relate it to the Productivity Commission’s Framework for Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage. It is not sufficient to measure the various aspects of disadvantage as we need to understand the pathways into...

The Poverty Wars started with a coordinated series of skirmishes by the Centre for Independent Studies. One of their main criticism of income-based measures of poverty is that measurement error(i.e. under-reporting) is pronounced for low income earners, especially those who indicate they have an...

Undertaking econometric modelling using samples from small populations such as Indigenous Australians, is difficult because of the data constraints facing both the researcher and the data collection agency. This paper uses the ABS’s Remote Access Data Laboratory to analyse an expanded unit...

Indigenous people are more likely to be discouraged from looking for work than other Australians. Data from the 1994 National Aboringinal and Torres Strait Islander Survey are used to analyse the factors that lead many indigenous people who want to work to not seek work, and hence remain outside...

Australia is indeed a sunburnt country, and is arguably becoming increasingly sunburnt. If most climate predictions are correct, much of Australia will experience droughts even more often. This paper uses the Rural and Regional Families Survey to explore the economic and financial implications...

Enhancing migration and mobility has been put forward by various commentators as a solution to Indigenous disadvantage in Australia, This paper examined patterns of migration and factors associated with the decision to move and the choice of destination in order to assess the feasibility of this...

Despite the widespread industrial relations reform of the last decade, little attention has been paid to the plight of groups traditionally disadvantaged in the labour market—including Indigenous people. The Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (AWIRS) 1995 is the first data set...