The challenge
Equality of opportunity is a key principle of Australian society. It motivates many areas of government policy, including taxes and transfers, education, health, housing, social services and labour market policy. Understanding the true nature of inequality and intergenerational mobility, and their drivers, is critical to ensuring policy is positively contributing to equality of opportunity.
The research
This five-year project, funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Projects grant, aims to enhance the methodological and theoretical foundations for measuring economic inequality and social mobility, and to understand their drivers. It will propose new measures of inequality and intergenerational mobility, provide theoretical foundations for mobility measures, explore parents’ aspirations for their children, and explore mechanisms of intergenerational persistence of disadvantage.
The impact
This project consists of ten interdependent studies, which will together provide a clear contemporary picture of Australian economic inequality and intergenerational mobility, and their drivers. It will therefore inform policies which enhance economic opportunity in Australia. Foci include the roles of housing, tax avoidance, inheritances and gifts, income tax progressivity, and the causal intergenerational effects of welfare receipt, labour market shocks, parental careers, and peer influences.
Our researchers
Melbourne Institute - Roger Wilkins
University of Technology Sydney - Peter Siminski
The Treasury - Nathan Deutscher
University of California, Irvine - Bhashkar Mazumder