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Abstract
Although economic growth is regarded as an indicator of the success of an economy and, therefore, an indicator of rising living standards, there is no guarantee that living standards will improve for all members of society unless the benefits derived from economic growth are shared equally. If the wealth generated by economic growth accrues to those at the top of the wealth distribution, levels of inequality will increase. In this paper, I use publicly available data from the World Bank, Credit Suisse, and Forbes Magazine for 11 countries in East Asia/ South East Asia: Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam, to examine whether increases in GDP/capita were accompanied by increases in wealth/adult and levels of wealth inequality between 2000 and 2016. In China, Hong Kong, and Vietnam, wealth inequality increased substantially despite, or perhaps due to, the rapid expansion of their economies. In other words, it would appear that the rising tide lifted some boats but swamped others.

AbstractThe distribution of school funding has been a controversial topic for decades particularly since the Australian Government introduced a new funding model for private schools in the late 1990s. Recent research shows that changes in the funding of private schools have encouraged growth in the number of private schools allowing parents with the financial means to select from an increasing range of options for their children. For this article, I conduct analyses of data from the 2003 cohort of the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth project to examine differences in the outcomes of students according to the type of school attended. The results presented in this article show that students with highly educated parents were more likely than other students to attend independent schools. After controlling for the level of economic, social and cultural status of the school population, type of school attended was not associated with academic achievement, as measured by the Programme for International Student Assessment tests. Furthermore, there was no statistically significant association between type of school attended and employment status, occupation or earnings at age 24, net of level of educational attainment.

AbstractSocial inequality is generally conceptualized in terms of economic disadvantage related to income, however this approach ignores another equally important dimension of social inequality: wealth inequality. Drawing on world systems theory and a Marxist perspective on social class, in this article I examine the interrelationship between stratification in the world economy and stratification within national economies with a view to developing a global class schema. This examination of trends in the net worth and the location of the wealthiest individuals in the world indicate that the rapid expansion of the world economy in the past three decades has affected the global distribution of wealth with an increasing proportion of the transnational capitalist class residing in semi-peripheral nations.

Although researchers generally agree that attitudes to gender roles have become more egalitarian over time, evidence that this trend towards egalitarianism has impacted upon the allocation of housework tasks between men and women is less consistent. Australian researchers have found that although the time women spend doing housework has declined dramatically over time, the housework hours of men have not increased. Although researchers in the US and many European nations have found that as women's housework hours have declined, men's housework hours have increased, they invariably find that women continue to spend more time doing housework than men do. Many researchers argue that the division housework into female tasks and male tasks underpins the unequal distribution of housework with female tasks such as cooking, cleaning and laundry accounting for the bulk of housework. This paper focuses on the association between gender attitudes and propensity to undertake core housework tasks. Using data collected by three cross-sectional national surveys conducted in 1986, 1993 and 2005 (n=2318), I conduct linear regressions to determine whether men with more egalitarian gender attitudes devote a greater proportion of their total housework time to so-called female tasks compared to men with more traditional gender attitudes.

AbstractDifferences in levels of academic achievement according to socio‐economic status (SES), and parental education in particular, have been a persistent feature of Australian education systems. Young people with highly educated parents are more likely than their peers with low‐educated parents to attain high levels of achievement at school. Students with low levels of achievement are less likely than their high achieving peers to complete Year 12 and are more likely to experience negative post‐school outcomes. The SES of the neighbourhood, and in particular, the school attended, has also been found to have an effect on levels of both academic achievement and attainment. For this paper, we conduct analyses of National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy test scores for four cohorts of secondary school students attending government schools in the Australian Capital Territory to examine the associations between parental education, school attended and levels of educational achievement. Our findings show that students with university‐educated parents achieve at much higher levels than their peers with low‐educated parents and that attending a school with a higher proportion of students from educationally disadvantaged families has a negative effect on educational achievement.

Die Verfasser gehen der Frage nach, wie ein Land wie Australien, das zwischen den im Entstehen begriffenen Schwellenländern Asiens und den alten westlichen Kernländern liegt, mit der globalen Wirtschaftskrise umgeht. Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung stehen Trendanalysen der Beschäftigungs- und Einkommensdynamik der Bevölkerung des Landes. Es wird argumentiert, dass die relative Isolation Australiens von dem Weltmarktgeschehen, insbesondere seine Autarkie, ausschlaggebend für das geringere Ausmaß der Wirkungen der globalen Finanzkrise sind. Im Hinblick auf seine Position im Weltsystem lässt sich Australien mit Ländern wie Kanada und Norwegen vergleichen. (ICB)

Previous research has established that paid care work is typically undertaken by women and that this work is often poorly rewarded in terms of pay and promotion opportunities. Much less is known about the reasons why women enter these jobs or their experiences of this work. This paper examines the motivations and experiences of two groups of care workers: childcare workers and dental assistants in Queensland in 2009 (N=1,767). We examine intrinsic, extrinsic and overall job satisfaction and the effects of job characteristics, work experience and demographic characteristics on job satisfaction. We find that childcare workers are less satisfied with their jobs than dental assistants on all three measures, despite a greater proportion nominating intrinsic reasons for entering the occupation. The most important factors predicting job satisfaction for both groups are day‐to‐day work experiences such as control over weekly rosters and entitlements that enable work‐family balance. We conclude that although love of the job may be a strong drawcard into care occupations for some women, experiences may not live up to expectations. Moreover, there is considerable diversity across these groups in motivations and outcomes indicating that it is impossible to view all care occupations as similar in terms rewards, outcomes and experiences.

"Following the increasing impact of globalizing economic forces worldwide, Australia, like many other liberal democracies, moved to adopt neoliberal economic policies with an emphasis on increasing deregulation of economic markets. The economic changes instituted since the 1980s have fundamentally restructured the economy and created a more flexible labor market. Jobs growth has been concentrated in industries that rely heavily on casual and part-time workers. Consequently, the proportion of all jobs that are permanent and Full-time has declined. In this chapter, the authors are interested in how these changes have affected the level of income and wealth inequality within Australian society. Although there is a general agreement amongst researchers that there has not been a significant increase in inequality in regard to either income or wealth between the 1980s and the 2000s, some researchers argue that earnings inequality has increased. There is also evidente of a mismatch between objective measures of inequality and the perceptions of the Australian people, with a significant majority of respondents in a national survey conducted in 2005 believing that Australia had become a more divided and less fair society since the 1980s. The present chapter examines these disparities and attempts to account for them." (author's abstract)

"Following the increasing impact of globalizing economic forces worldwide, Australia, like many other liberal democracies, moved to adopt neoliberal economic policies with an emphasis on increasing deregulation of economic markets. The economic changes instituted since the 1980s have fundamentally restructured the economy and created a more flexible labor market. Jobs growth has been concentrated in industries that rely heavily on casual and part-time workers. Consequently, the proportion of all jobs that are permanent and Full-time has declined. In this chapter, the authors are interested in how these changes have affected the level of income and wealth inequality within Australian society. Although there is a general agreement amongst researchers that there has not been a significant increase in inequality in regard to either income or wealth between the 1980s and the 2000s, some researchers argue that earnings inequality has increased. There is also evidente of a mismatch between objective measures of inequality and the perceptions of the Australian people, with a significant majority of respondents in a national survey conducted in 2005 believing that Australia had become a more divided and less fair society since the 1980s. The present chapter examines these disparities and attempts to account for them." (author's abstract).

Presents new research by leading scholars in Australia and the United States on economic factors that influence children's development and the respective social policies the two nations have designed to boost human capital development. - Provided by publisher