IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ozl/journl/v19y2016i1p15-32.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Growing Gap Between Rich and Poor in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Saunders

    (University of New South Wales)

  • Bruce Bradbury

    (University of New South Wales, Sydney)

  • Melissa Wong

    (University of New South Wales, Sydney)

Abstract

Economic inequality has emerged as a policy issue as recent academic studies have documented the extent of change and raised questions about its underlying causes and economic and social impacts. This paper examines the levels of income and wealth inequality and recent changes using data from the Survey of Income and Housing (SIH) conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Attention focuses on where different groups fit in the overall income distribution - how specific assets (particularly owner-occupied housing) affect the distribution of wealth within and between different generations, the joint distribution of income and wealth and how both distributions have changed in recent years. The observed changes cover the period before and after the 2008 financial crisis and have occurred against a background of increases in real income and real net wealth, although the gains have been greater for those at the top of both distributions than for those at the bottom.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Saunders & Bruce Bradbury & Melissa Wong, 2016. "The Growing Gap Between Rich and Poor in Australia," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 19(1), pages 15-32.
    • Handle: RePEc:ozl:journl:v:19:y:2016:i:1:p:15-32
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ftprepec.drivehq.com/ozl/journl/downloads/AJLE191Saunders.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Salverda, Wiemer & Nolan, Brian & Checchi, Daniele & Marx, Ive & McKnight, Abigail & Toth, Istvan Gy (ed.), 2014. "Changing Inequalities in Rich Countries: Analytical and Comparative Perspectives," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199687435.
    2. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    3. Atkinson, Anthony B., 2015. "Inequality: what can be done?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 101810, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Peter Whiteford, 2015. "Inequality and Its Socioeconomic Impacts," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 48(1), pages 83-92, March.
    5. Michael Fletcher & Ben Guttermann, 2013. "Income Inequality in Australia," Economic Roundup, The Treasury, Australian Government, issue 2, pages 35-56, December.
    6. Roger Wilkins, 2015. "Measuring Income Inequality in Australia," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 48(1), pages 93-102, March.
    7. Paul Frijters & Gigi Foster, 2015. "Rising Inequality: A Benign Outgrowth of Markets or a Symptom of Cancerous Political Favours?," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 48(1), pages 67-75, March.
    8. Ian M. McDonald, 2015. "Policy Forum: On the Economics and Politics of Inequality," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 48(1), pages 65-66, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Weiguang Liu, 2018. "The Self-Ful?lling Discriminations and Mismatches for Old Workers and Poor Workers," Applied Economics and Finance, Redfame publishing, vol. 5(1), pages 58-74, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tony Ward, 2017. "Inequality and Growth: Reviewing the Economic and Social Impacts," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 50(1), pages 32-51, March.
    2. Junyi Zhu, 2014. "Bracket Creep Revisited - with and without r > g: Evidence from Germany," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 23(3), pages 106-158, November.
    3. Brandolini, Andrea & Micklewright, John, 2020. "Tony Atkinson's New Book, Measuring Poverty around the World: Some Further Reflections," IZA Discussion Papers 12890, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Fabio Clementi & Mauro Gallegati & Lisa Gianmoena & Simone Landini & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2019. "Mis-measurement of inequality: a critical reflection and new insights," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 14(4), pages 891-921, December.
    5. Rolf Aaberge & François Bourguignon & Andrea Brandolini & Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Janet C. Gornick & John Hills & Markus Jäntti & Stephen P. Jenkins & Eric Marlier & John Micklewright & Brian Nolan, 2017. "Tony Atkinson and his Legacy," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63(3), pages 411-444, September.
    6. Rolf Aaberge & Ugo Colombino, 2018. "Structural Labour Supply Models and Microsimulation," International Journal of Microsimulation, International Microsimulation Association, vol. 11(1), pages 162-197.
    7. Mark Westcott & John Murray, 2017. "Financialisation and inequality in Australia," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 28(4), pages 519-537, December.
    8. repec:aia:aiaswp:wp164 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Francesco Bogliacino & Daniel Rojas Lozano, 2018. "The Evolution of Inequality in Latin America in the 21st Century: What are the patterns, drivers and causes?," PSL Quarterly Review, Economia civile, vol. 71(286), pages 279-308.
    10. Stefano Boscolo, 2019. "Quantifying the Redistributive Effect of the Erosion of the Italian Personal Income Tax Base: A Microsimulation Exercise," ECONOMIA PUBBLICA, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2019(2), pages 39-80.
    11. Tania Burchardt & Rod Hick, 2017. "Inequality and the Capability Approach," CASE Papers /201, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    12. Andrew Leigh & Adam Triggs, 2016. "Markets, Monopolies and Moguls: The Relationship between Inequality and Competition," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 49(4), pages 389-412, December.
    13. Emiliano Álvarez & Marcelo Álvez & Juan Gabriel Brida, 2020. "Impuesto progresivo al ingreso y crecimiento. Abordaje desde la complejidad," Documentos de trabajo 2020008, Banco Central del Uruguay.
    14. Bogliacino, Francesco & Rojas Lozano, Daniel, 2017. "The evolution of inequality in Latin America in the 21st century: Patterns, drivers and causal hypotheses," MPRA Paper 77803, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Wiemer Salverda, 2016. "The tsunamis of educational attainment and part-time employment, and the change of the labour force 1960–2010: what can be learned about self-reinforcing labour-market inequality from the case of the ," ImPRovE Working Papers 16/04, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    16. Arturo Martinez Jr. & Tina Rampino & Mark Western & Wojtek Tomaszewski & Jude David Roque, 2017. "Estimating the Contribution of Circumstances that Reflect Inequality of Opportunities," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 36(4), pages 380-400, December.
    17. Martin Ravallion, 2020. "Book review of Measuring Poverty around the World," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 18(1), pages 131-136, March.
    18. Bavaro, Michele & Raitano, Michele, 2024. "Is working enough to escape poverty? Evidence on low-paid workers in Italy," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 495-511.
    19. Palma, J. G., 2020. "Why the Rich Stay Rich. On dysfunctional institutions’ “ability to persist” (no matter what)," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 20124, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    20. Arthur Grimes & Sean Hyland, 2020. "Measuring cross‐country material wellbeing and inequality using consumer durables," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 67(3), pages 248-271, July.
    21. Burchardt, Tania & Hick, Rod, 2017. "Inequality and the capability approach," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103504, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic inequality; income distribution; distribution of net wealth; recent trends;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D30 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - General
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ozl:journl:v:19:y:2016:i:1:p:15-32. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sandie Rawnsley (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/becurau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.