Abstract
Over the past twenty years the number of income distribution and poverty studies in Australia has increased enormously. This research has been made possible because surveys undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), particularly the Income Distribution Surveys and the Household Expenditure Surveys with detailed information on the economic circumstances of households and families, have been made publicly available through unit record tapes.
As more data have become available the conclusions of research have not necessarily been similar. How can these messages be reconciled? Part of the answer is that some messages are not contradictory. A larger part of the explanation is that individual researchers have focused on different aspects of income and used differing methods of analysis. Technical choices may have a decisive influence on apparent trends, as well as on the picture of the underlying extent of inequality. This chapter reports on the impact such technical conventions have on poverty trend estimates. By retracing the terrain in reported results we can shed light on how poorly understood statistical effects may have adversely influenced clarity in welfare policy debate.
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Horn, S., Whiteford, P. (2002). Assessing Trends in Poverty in Australia. In: Glatzer, W. (eds) Rich and Poor. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0257-8_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0257-8_4
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