Agency, Contingency and Census Process: Observations of the 2006 Indigenous Enumeration Strategy in remote Aboriginal Australia

The intercensal period (2006–2011) was a time of significant policy and population change in Indigenous affairs. The aim of this paper is to document the changing distribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population and housing geographies over that period. We use the Indigenous Region structure developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to show that Indigenous Australians grew at a rate that significantly outstrips the non‐Indigenous population with an increasing concentration of the Indigenous population on the urban eastern seaboard and particularly among older people. We present results that show that for certain measures, the housing situation of the Indigenous population in 2011 had improved relative to the Indigenous population in 2006. A smaller proportion of Indigenous households were estimated to live in an overcrowded dwelling compared with Indigenous households in 2006. There were also significant increases in the per cent of Indigenous households that owned or were purchasing their own home. Other results might be seen as less positive with community housing (a tenure type identified as having benefits in both qualitative and quantitative analysis) declining in importance. In net terms though, Indigenous households continue to experience a high degree of housing need. Compared with other households, they were 3.7 times as likely to live in an overcrowded dwelling.

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Gender Gaps in Indigenous Socioeconomic Outcomes: Australian Regional Comparisons and International Possibilities

Yap

Biddle

2010

iipj

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International literature clearly demonstrates the potential for gender-based inequalities to constrain development processes. In the United Nations Development Programme Gender-related Development Index, Australia ranks in the top five across 177 countries, suggesting that the loss of human development due to gender inequality is minor. However, such analysis has not been systematically applied to the Indigenous Australian population, at least in a quantitative sense. Using the 2006 Australian Census, this paper provides an analysis across three dimensions of socioeconomic disparity: Indigeneity, gender, and geography. This paper also explores the development of a similar gender-related index as a tool to enable a relative ranking of the performance of Indigenous males and females at the regional level across a set of socioeconomic outcomes. The initial findings suggest that although there is a substantial development gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, the development loss from gender-related inequality for Indigenous Australians is relatively small. Higher life expectancy and education attainment for Indigenous females balances out their slightly lower earnings to a large extent. At the regional level, Indigenous females tend to fare better than Indigenous males for the set of indicators chosen; and, this is particularly true in capital cities.

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Agency, Contingency and Census Process: Observations of the 2006 Indigenous Enumeration Strategy in remote Aboriginal Australia

Cited by 7 publications

References 17 publications

Indigenous Wellbeing Frameworks in Australia and the Quest for Quantification

Indigenous Wellbeing Frameworks in Australia and the Quest for Quantification

Recent Change in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Population and Housing Geographies

Gender Gaps in Indigenous Socioeconomic Outcomes: Australian Regional Comparisons and International Possibilities

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