The Dynamics of Multidimensional Poverty in Contemporary Australia

Abstract

Successfully addressing social inequalities requires moving from one-dimensional to multidimensional poverty measures, but evidence on Australia is still largely reliant on the former. Using panel data and counterfactual simulations, we examine the relative roles of material resources, employment, education, health, social support, community participation, and safety perceptions in explaining changes in multidimensional poverty in Australia between 2001 and 2012. We find that year-on-year absolute changes in multidimensional poverty are mainly driven by fluctuations in social support, community participation, and health. Social support, health and material resources increased relative poverty, whereas personal safety, employment, community participation and education reduced it. Changes in socio-economic returns to parental characteristics had also some impacts on changes in poverty rates. These findings constitute evidence that integrating non-income indicators of wellbeing in Australian policies aimed at addressing poverty would enhance their effectiveness and efficiency.

Localised Estimates of Dynamics of Multi‐dimensional Disadvantage: An Application of the Small Area Estimation Technique Using Australian Survey and Census Data

“…Scutella et al () carried out sensitivity analysis to different choices of weights and found that this made little to no difference in the prevalence estimates. Additionally, new work by Martinez & Perales () based on a different framework of creating multi‐dimensional poverty found practically similar results to those using the framework developed by Scutella et al (). Relatedly, for small area estimation methods, the problem often encountered is whether we estimate every single component at the small area level and then composite or to simply estimate the composited result (as we have done in this application).…”

Multidimensional poverty in South Africa in 2001–16

“…Noble et al (2006Noble et al ( , 2010 andNoble & Wright (2013) also used Grade 7 as the threshold. 11 Disability was also included in recent local(Frame et al, 2016;Omotoso & Koch 2017) and international (e.g Suppa, 2015;Hanandita & Tampubolon, 2016;Martinez Jr & Perales, 2017). studies.http://repository.uwc.ac.za…”

Towards a phenomenology of poverty: Defining poverty through the lived experiences of the ‘poor’

“…In order to advise on the latter, we must first understand the former. In both policy and scholarly discourse, the term ‘poverty’ has been viewed through an economic lens and has referred almost solely to income level; the oft-referred-to poverty line is relatively easy to measure and is used to compare groups both within and across countries (Martinez Jr and Perales, 2017). These poverty lines were originally based on definitions of poverty as absolute poverty, where poverty is understood as lacking sufficient income to meet basic needs (Lister, 2004).…”

“…Other aspects of Australian poverty research have extensively drawn on panel and administrative data in order to understand and identify trends and the prevalence of poverty. Kostenko et al (2009), for instance, used data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey to measure the extent of poverty and social exclusion in Australia (see also Martinez Jr and Perales, 2017; Saunders and Naidoo, 2018). Azpitarte and Bodsworth (2015) similarly used HILDA survey data to determine the socioeconomic factors that affect the likelihood of someone remaining in poverty.…”