A bit of a debate is raging in the Youth Allowance post about how dependent students are on other members of their family. Sinclair points out that most 15-24 year olds live with their parents. Based on a mix of census and DEST data, I have estimated in the past that around 60% of late teen uni students live with one or both parents. Of those at home, they are an affluent bunch: median household income is $104,000 a year.

But how much sharing goes on within the household? The AVCC/Universities Australia student finances survey asked this question, referring to parents and partners. For ‘often’ relying on non-cash assistance, for full-time undergraduates:

Meals: 60%
Accommodation: 58%
Telephone: 53%
Use of car: 31%
Clothing: 20%
Textbooks: 28%

38% of full time undergraduates classed themselves as ‘financially independent’.

The 2006 General Social Survey found that of the people who had children aged 18 to 24 living away from home, 58% provided them with support: Read the rest of this entry »

Five years ago, I wrote a paper (pdf) critiquing the idea that HECS contributed to childlessness among female graduates.

Though my conclusion of no effect was supported by an article in the Journal of Population Research last year, using the HILDA survey which has a question on student debt, one of my main theories as to why female graduates have a low average number of children continues to be largely overlooked - and surprisingly so, I think.

My theory turns on the admittedly (and this is why it is surprising) rather obvious point that, despite advances in reproductive medicine, babies are more likely to be born if there is a man in the house, and one likely to stick around long enough to help raise the child. I reported data based on the 1996 census showing that married women in the professional jobs that graduates normally aspire to actually had near-replacement fertility levels. It was the large number of unmarried and childless women pushing down the average.

Unfortunately the marriage factor has been a blind spot in subsequent research that I have seen on this topic. In the Journal of Population Research article they controlled for half a dozen variables, but not whether or not there was a potential father. My suggestion that perhaps one solution to low fertility among female graduates was improved education for boys, to improve the dating market for educated women, was reported as ‘perhaps tongue in cheek’.
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My blog suggestion yesterday that ‘working couples with children’ deserve ‘much less’ welfare assistance attracted some questioning in the post’s comments. NPOV asks

is this from the starting point that you believe almost everyone deserves “less”, and couples with children deserve “much less” because they already get more than everyone else?

Certainly my starting point is the classical liberal one that people are entitled to keep their earnings unless there is some strong reason to tax it away from them. Among the reasons given for taxing, redistribution of cash to families seems to me to be among the weakest. It is not specifically aimed at meeting any need that is generally agreed upon, such as for education or healthcare. It is given to people with incomes that are well above average, who are quite capable of giving their children food, clothing and shelter without any outside help at all.

Though some family welfare meets genuine needs, much of it is redistribution between family types irrespective of need. Recent years have seen a significant improvement in the financial position of families relative to single people and couples without dependent children (though people in the latter still generally have the most to spend on themselves).
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The previous government was extraordinarily generous to families.  According to calculations I did from Treasury’s Intergenerational Reports, the FTBs alone increased, in per person terms, 29% per person between the 2002 and 2007 reports. And that’s not counting the baby bonus or childcare handouts.

Yet according to the 2007 Australian Election Survey, only 41% of respondents thought that the Howard government had become more generous over the last 10 years to ‘working couples with children’. 23% of Australians, who must have been holidaying on another planet during the Howard era, even thought that they had become ‘tougher’ on these working families.

But in this familist time, is there any end to the demands of ‘working families’? According to the AES, 49.5% of respondents agree that ‘working couples with children’ deserve more or much more from the social welfare system. My answer, that they deserve ‘much less’, is supported by a miserable 0.8% of respondents. Even the answer that they deserve ‘less’ support has only 4.5% support. And I thought I had a tough task selling higher education reform.

But some hope comes from this morning’s Newspoll reported in The Australian. About two-thirds majorities support means testing the baby bonus and FTB B, and 57% support means testing childcare tax rebates. And there is majority support for the testing to begin at $70,000 a year, which if based on household income would start to make some serious savings.

Of course I think these savings should be directed to tax cuts, which would in part benefit those same families. Yet this Newspoll, like other recent polling on the subject, finds that support for tax cuts drops (in this case from 66% to 36%) if respondents are told that tax cuts might cause interest rates to increase. But tax cuts financed from reduced family spending ought to be neutral for interest rates, since the total amount ending up in consumers’ pockets will be the same.

The Rudd government’s decision to block the ACT government’s civil union plans continued to attract criticism this morning, but also a religious defence.

The Australian Election Survey 2007, conducted after last November’s election, provides some further polling evidence on where the public stands on this issue. In a question about whether same-sex marriage should be recognised by law, the public is now evenly divided, with 43.6% in favour and 43.2% against. That’s less than the June 2007 figure of 57% in favour in a GetUp! Galaxy poll, but I thought at the time that this number was suspiciously high and probably due to it being asked directly after a question on various other forms of discrimination against gays. However the AES result is above the 35% in favour in the 2005 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes.

The three polls all had different question wording, but there are some consistent patterns of opinion. Men and women are mirror images on this issue; 34% of men are in favour of same-sex marriage and 53% against, while 52% of women are in favour and 35% against. I can’t immediately think of any other issue on which male and female opinion is so different.
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The Age this morning reports the findings of 2006 census analysis I did wearing my University of Melbourne hat.

It looks at 18 and 19 year olds living at home (so we can see parental occupation and household income) to see how socieconomic background affects university and TAFE attendance rates. As there are similar census studies for 1991, 1996 and 2001, we can also observe trends over time.

For regular readers of this blog, the finding that the increased university attendance charges in 2005 had no negative impact on low SES attendance rates will come as no surprise. But the growth observed between 1991 and 2001 for all groups has stalled.

Unfortunately, the 1991 to 2001 census data does not disaggregate 18 and 19 year olds; which means it is hard for me to work out whether this is a real stalling, or a by-product of students starting university studies at a later age. For the 2006 census, there were significant increases in university attendance rates between age 18 and age 19 (21% of 18 year olds, 30% of 19 year olds).

The most striking finding, as it had been in earlier census-based studies, was that for the sons of blue collar families the normal pattern of university attendance increasing with household income is reversed. The more the family earns, the less likely it is that their sons will attend university, and the more likely it is that they will attend TAFE. For the daughters, the usual relationship is observed, but the attendance rate is only 3% higher in the wealthiest blue-collar families than it is in the poorest.
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The 2006 ABS time use survey results were issued today, giving us another chance to review the claims of left-familists that our time needs their regulation.

The ABS classifies time according to activities, but also into the categories of ‘necessary time’, such as sleeping, eating, and personal hygiene; ‘contracted time’, such as work or education which have specific time obligations; ‘committed time’, such as child care, domestic duties and voluntary work, and ‘free time’, what’s left.

All household types record a slight drop in ‘free time’, by 0.5% to 2.1% of the day, between 1997 and 2006. Most household types also saw slight drops in ‘necessary time’. For households with kids, the greatest gains were in ‘contracted time’, with increases ranging from 0.9% for couples with kids over 15 to 5% for lone parents with kids under 15. Except for the latter group, there were also gains in ‘committed time’.

So does that ‘contracted time’ figure mean people are working longer hours? In 2006, the average man who had a job spent 7 hours and 56 minutes at work and 58 minutes on associated travel. In 1997 he spent 8 hours and 3 minutes at work and 60 minutes travelling. In 1992 he spent 7 hours and 53 minutes at work and 54 minutes travelling. (I’m getting the comparison figures from How Australians Use Their Time 1997.) So there is really no trend here. Even the traffic problems constantly in the news are hard to see in these figures.
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Conservative and ‘progressive’ Liberals may disagree on much, but it seems they share at least one attribute - confusing their hopes with our reality. Last December Senator Judith Troeth called for a ‘progressive liberalism’ to restore the party’s electoral fortunes. As I pointed out at the time, the polling does not support Troeth’s conclusions.

And today NSW Young Liberal President Noel McCoy has an op-ed in The Australian arguing that John Howard’s social conservatism resonated with young people.

The evidence for this is rather thin, as McCoy effectively admits. That in 2004 the Australia Election Study found more young people voting Liberal than Labor ‘for the first time’. So the AES surveys in 1996, 1998 and 2001 (and no doubt 2007) are aberrations, and we should rely on the 2004 survey? McCoy is drawing on Clive Bean’s research, but Bean was relying on a sample of 121 persons aged 25 and under (see his chapter in Mortgage Nation). Ian Watson’s analysis of a much bigger sample of Newspoll respondents found the Coalition’s worst-ever result among the 18-24 year olds in 2004.
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My friend John Heard is always quick to jump on any suggestion of gay marriage or civil unions; so much so that two op-eds on the subject this year have had to be qualified by subsequent blog posts (here and here).

Labor is not, as John now concedes but claimed in his Australian op-ed this morning, about to introduce civil unions in breach of an election promise. What it is planning to do is move towards relationship registers and remove various forms of discrimination against gay couples, as set out in the ALP platform.

The problem with John’s anti-civil union/gay marriage stance is that though his position on this issue is essentially the Catholic one, that’s a hard argument to make in a minority Catholic country with a strong tradition of secular politics.

So he is forced to adopt various ad hoc arguments that provide no solid basis for an anti-civil union/gay marriage argument. The problems of ad hocery are well-summarised in this passage from today’s op-ed:
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A story on The Age website this afternoon, referring to the release of the ABS birth statistics for 2006, is headlined ‘New figures reveal our baby boom’. It reports:

Australian Bureau of Statistics data released today showed that 265,900 births were registered in 2006, the second highest since the record 276,400 births recorded in 1971.

The baby bonus rate changed during the year, but on my estimates that would have cost taxpayers $950 million. So did nearly a billion dollars buy us an increase in the number of babies being born?

A closer examination of the statistics suggests not. Read the rest of this entry »