How to give all Australians an equal start in life
Share
Social scientists have sought to measure the degree of upward income mobility (the ability of low-income people to rise up the ladder over time) and found that some nations perform better than others on this criterion. Looking back over recent decades, Australia emerges as a more mobile (less “sticky”) society than the United States, Britain and Germany. This may be because successive Australian governments embraced more social activism than the US and Britain but did more to cultivate an open and flexible economy than Germany. This is the past. The future is much less clear. A discussion paper I have written for the Australia Institute, Equality of Opportunity in Australia – Myth and Reality, highlights the many (often growing) barriers to upward mobility faced by Australians from low income backgrounds over their lifetimes (relative to their better-off co-citizens).
Related documents
Between the Lines Newsletter
The biggest stories and the best analysis from the team at the Australia Institute, delivered to your inbox every fortnight.
You might also like
On International Women’s Day: How the Fair Work Commission Can Really Take On the Gender Pay Gap
On occasion of International Women’s Day, the Centre for Future Work’s Senior Researcher Lisa Heap reviews the opportunities to use recent industrial relations reforms to more ambitiously address Australia’s gender pay gap.
Extract: Heat – Life and Death on a Scorched Planet by Jeff Goodell
When heat comes, it’s invisible.
The Climate Crisis is an Integrity Crisis | Polly Hemming
I am starting my address to this year’s summit in the exact same way that I started last year’s address. Because it is just over a year since I delivered these same words, which aren’t actually my words. They are the words of our Climate Change Minister, and they provide a baseline of sorts for what progress has been made in that time.