Atkinson, Piketty, and Saez (2011) survey an important new literature using income taxbased data to measure the share of income held by top income groups. But changes in tax legislation that expand the tax base to include income sources (e.g. capital gains, dividends, etc.) disproportionately...

We use data from a nationally representative Australian household panel survey to examine the extent and nature of self-reported job discrimination, its correlates, and its associations with various employment outcomes and measures of subjective wellbeing. We find that approximately 8.5% of job...

Survey under-coverage of top incomes leads to bias in survey-based estimates of overall income inequality. Using income tax record data in combination with survey data is a potential approach to address the problem; we consider here the UK's pioneering ‘SPI adjustment' method that implements...

Computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) offers many attractive benefits over paper and pencil interviewing. There is, however, mixed evidence on the impact of CAPI on interview length, an important survey outcome in the context of length limits imposed by survey budgets and concerns over...

Fragmented welfare service delivery has been identified as a significant barrier to improving outcomes for highly disadvantaged individuals. The ‘YP4' trial, conducted from 2005 to 2009, sought to evaluate, by randomised control method, an approach proposed by Campbell et al. (2003) for...

We investigate transitions between unemployment, low-paid employment and higher-paid employment using household panel data for the period 2001 to 2011. Dynamic panel data methods are used to estimate the effects of labour force status on subsequent labour force status. A distinctive feature of...

This article introduces four metrics quantifying the adequacy of retirement savings taking into account all major sources of retirement income. The metrics are applied to a representative sample of the Australian population aged 40 and above. Employers in Australia currently make compulsory...

We use a new Australian longitudinal income tax dataset, Alife, covering 1991–2017, to examine levels and trends in the persistence in top-income group membership, focussing on the top 1%. We summarize persistence in multiple ways, documenting levels and trends in rates of remaining in...

We systematically compare differences in recent Australian income inequality estimates derived from tax records and survey data. We use customised tax tables provided by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to more precisely measure Australian top incomes as conceptualised in the international...

Most large-scale ongoing face-to-face surveys which began using pen and paper interviewing (PAPI) face an eventual shift to computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI). In preparation for such a shift in the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, a trial of the...