M Western
Biographic Data
| ID | 2932 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Western |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Western |
| SIGNATURE | WESTERN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Queensland |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5399-6911 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 380 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Cultural stratification in the labor market outcomes of university-educated migrants in Australia: The relevance of cultural and linguistic proximity
Previous studies on segmented assimilation reveal that immigrants from various origin countries follow different labor market pathways and achieve diverse socioeconomic outcomes. This paper extends existing research on migrant integration by investigating how cultural and linguistic proximity to the host society affects labor market outcomes. Utilizing unique, whole-of-population, integrated government data on Australian university graduates (N=8…
Identifying factors for poorer educational outcomes that may be exacerbated by Covid ‐19: A systematic review focussing on at‐risk school children and adolescents
School closures across Australia in response to COVID‐19 have persisted since 2020, with rising mental health problems in children and adolescents, alongside rising negative family health and socioeconomic outcomes. Further, some children and young people who were already experiencing disadvantage pre‐pandemic may be at heightened risk of poorer educational outcomes. Therefore, the aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review of the liter…
Connection, connectivity and choice: Learning during Covid ‐19 restrictions across mainstream schools and Flexible Learning Programmes in Australia
The COVID‐19 pandemic and associated school closures may have constrained educational participation particularly for students in disadvantaged circumstances. We explore how 30 disadvantaged students in secondary school (14 mainstream/16 Flexible Learning Programme) from Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania experienced home learning during the first wave of COVID‐19, teasing out nuances across two educational models. Drawing on semi‐structured…
Uneven impacts of Covid ‐19 on the attendance rates of secondary school students from different socioeconomic backgrounds in Australia: A quasi‐experimental analysis of administrative data
This paper contributes to the growing body of research that demonstrates uneven impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on educational outcomes of students from different socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. We evaluate the early impacts of COVID‐19 on student attendance in secondary school and show how these impacts depend on students' SES. We employ a quasi‐experimental design, using difference‐in‐differences (DiD) estimation extended to incorporat…
The Impact of Effective Teaching Practices on Academic Achievement When Mediated by Student Engagement: Evidence from Australian High Schools
Previous research has proposed a conceptual framework indicating the mediating role of student engagement on the relationship between effective teaching practices and student academic outcomes. This study is the first internationally to empirically test this conceptual framework for the key aspects of teaching practice—effective learning time and expectations for success—using robust, linked longitudinal survey–administrative data from 6825 publi…
Les gagnants et les perdants de l'emploi informel en Indonésie
Dans la plupart des études, les travailleurs de l’économie informelle sont présentés comme un tout homogène. Les auteurs considèrent pourtant qu'il peut y avoir parmi eux des gagnants et des perdants. En utilisant des régressions quantiles sur distribution non conditionnelle et des données issues d'une enquête auprès des ménages indonésiens (IFLS), ils estiment l’écart de rémunération entre travailleurs formels et travailleurs informels à différe…
The long arm of parental advantage: Socio-economic background and parental financial transfers over adult children’s life courses
Student engagement as a mediator of the effects of socio‐economic status on academic performance among secondary school students in Australia
In this article, we contribute to understanding of the mechanisms through which students’ socio‐economic family background can translate into academic performance by focusing on the concept of student engagement. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from disciplines across the social sciences, and a major nationally representative dataset from Australia, which links survey responses with administrative records on school performance, we conduct a s…
Disadvantaged families’ experiences of home-school partnerships: Navigating agency, expectations and stigma
There is now international consensus that building positive partnerships between home and school is critically important for children’s learning. However, the notion of family-school ‘partnership’ remains a vexed issue in education in Australia, with a persistent gap between the rhetoric/rationale for partnership and the lived experience of relationships that are the linchpin of effective and respectful practice. This gap may be amplified for som…
Immigrant network diversity in the land of the fair go
Using data from a first national Australian survey of networks, this article explores factors linked with differential diversity of immigrant social capital. Past international research shows that ethnic minorities have less diverse social capital, an important resource for securing opportunities and getting ahead. A similar research focus has not existed so far in Australia. This article explores social capital in Australia, focusing on immigran…
Social Networks and Subjective Wellbeing in Australia: New Evidence from a National Survey
The article draws on data from a national survey in Australia in 2014 to examine how social networks affect life satisfaction and happiness. Findings show that social network composition, social attachment, perceived social support and the volume of social resources are significantly positively associated with life satisfaction and happiness. Stress about social commitments, feeling restricted by social demands and being excluded by a social grou…
From Bench to Curbside: Considering the Role of Simulations in Scaling‐up Justice Interventions
Subjective Wellbeing, Objective Wellbeing and Inequality in Australia
In recent years policy makers and social scientists have devoted considerable attention to wellbeing, a concept that refers to people's capacity to live healthy, creative and fulfilling lives. Two conceptual approaches dominate wellbeing research. The objective approach examines the objective components of a good life. The subjective approach examines people's subjective evaluations of their lives. In the objective approach how subjective wellbei…
A land of the ‘fair go’? Intergenerational earnings elasticity in Australia
This paper contributes to the existing literature on income mobility by developing and applying a two‐stage panel regression model and assessing the effects of using different levels of occupational (dis)aggregation and different earnings measures on the magnitude of father–son earnings elasticities in Australia. We find that the overall intergenerational earnings elasticity in Australia between 2001 and 2013 ranges from 0.11 to 0.30. Our preferr…
A Life-Changing Event: First Births and Men's and Women's Attitudes to Mothering and Gender Divisions of Labor
Previous research has shown that the transition to parenthood is a critical life-course stage. Using data from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey and fixed-effects panel regression models, we investigate changes in men's and women's attitudes to mothering and gender divisions of labor following the transition to parenthood. Key findings indicate that attitudes become more traditional after individuals experience the bi…
How Income Segmentation Affects Income Mobility: Evidence from Panel Data in the P hilippines
Despite vibrant economic growth, the Philippines confronts persistently high income inequality. Using household‐level panel data collected for the years 2003, 2006 and 2009, we investigate how income segmentation affects F ilipinos' income mobility prospects. The results of the multinomial logistic models suggest that if households are grouped according to initial income (in 2003), richer households had the lowest propensity to experience slow to…
Multiple job holding and income mobility in Indonesia
Beneath the 'Digital Native' myth: Understanding young Australians’ online time use
As young people's internet use shapes their experiences of education, work and personal relationships, their portrayal as 'Digital Natives' suggests that they are invariably better positioned than preceding generations to capitalize on such changes. Recent debates in internet use research undermine this view. While acknowledging socio-demographic differences in use, theorists disagree as to whether these reflect disparities in internet access, pr…
The Handbook of Global Online Journalism
In 1993, a couple of months after the launch of the first web browser, Mosaic, the University of Florida ' s Journalism Department launched what is generally considered to be the first online journalism web site.It was a very basic, static web site, with a picture of the red-bricked wall of the Journalism Department.It was updated only occasionally, at nights and weekends, when the machine was not in use by others, running on a 486-25 processor w…
Australian politicians' beliefs about climate change: Political Partisanship and Political Ideology
Despite the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change and its implications, there is considerably less certainty or strength of belief among the general public in some industrialised countries. One explanation for the lack of consensus is the partisan nature of political debate about climate change. A survey of Australian politicians demonstrates that political party affiliation and ideology have a powerful influence on climate change …
Expecting the unexpected: Young people’s expectations about marriage and family
Many social theorists argue that institutions such as organized religion, the nuclear family and social traditions more generally, are in a rapid and potentially terminal decline. At the same time, there has been a growing emphasis on the processes of individualization, the rise of the 'reflexive self', de-traditionalization and an emergent view of life as a 'planning project' where individuals determine their future pathways through autonomous d…
Social Networks and Occupational Attainment in Australia
This article contributes to exploring the comparative effects of market mechanisms and social networks and the interplay of human capital and social networks in western labour markets. We examine social networks and occupational attainment by using data from the 2007 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes and provide three major findings: (1) as a job search method, social networks are associated with lower earnings and occupational status and a l…
A stalled revolution? Gender role attitudes in Australia, 1986–2005
This paper examines trends over time in attitudes to gender equality in Australia. We use data from repeated cross-sectional surveys in Australia to investigate trends in beliefs about men’s and women’s work and family roles between 1986 and 2005. We find that men are consistently more conservative than women, that younger cohorts tend to be less conservative than older cohorts, but those born between 1960 and 1980 are more egalitarian on some is…
Overstating Value Change: Question Ordering in the Postmaterial Values Index
In much of his research on intergenerational value change, Inglehart uses a four-item index to calculate levels of postmaterial and material value orientations. Latter waves of the World Values Surveys administer a 12-item values index in which the original four-item index is embedded. In some of his research, Inglehart compares values estimated from stand-alone and embedded indices. Using a split sample design, we administered two versions of th…
The influence of Green parties on postmaterialist values
This paper contributes to the debate on value change by advancing a new explanation of the relationship between political parties and generational-based values in advanced industrialized nations. Through multivariate analysis of World Values and other survey data from 29 countries, we show that the relationship between generations and values tends to vary between polities dominated by major parties and those in which many parties achieve electora…
Australian politicians' beliefs about climate change: Political Partisanship and Political Ideology
Despite the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change and its implications, there is considerably less certainty or strength of belief among the general public in some industrialised countries. One explanation for the lack of consensus is the partisan nature of political debate about climate change. A survey of Australian politicians demonstrates that political party affiliation and ideology have a powerful influence on climate change …
Satisfaction with Housework: Examining the Paradox
This paper examines men's and women's levels of satisfaction with the domestic division of labour. In most households women continue to undertake the bulk of childcare and housework duties and consequently spend significantly greater amounts of time on domestic labour than men. Men report high levels of satisfaction with these arrangements, but surprisingly we find that almost half of our sample of women also report satisfaction with these arrang…
The Permeability of Class Boundaries to Intergenerational Mobility Among Men in the United States, Canada, Norway and Sweden
We explore the differential permeability of three class boundaries-the boundaries determined by property, authority and expertise-to intergenerational mobility among men in four developed capitalist economies: the United States, Canada, Norway and Sweden. We conclude: (1) In all four countries, the authority boundary is the most permeable to intergenerational mobility; (2) in the two North American countries, the patterns of permeability of class…
A stalled revolution? Gender role attitudes in Australia, 1986–2005
This paper examines trends over time in attitudes to gender equality in Australia. We use data from repeated cross-sectional surveys in Australia to investigate trends in beliefs about men’s and women’s work and family roles between 1986 and 2005. We find that men are consistently more conservative than women, that younger cohorts tend to be less conservative than older cohorts, but those born between 1960 and 1980 are more egalitarian on some is…
Social Class and Social Identity: A Comment on Marshall et al
The continuing persistence of strong class identification is one of the findings highlighted by Marshall, Rose, Vogler and Newby in their recent (1988) enquiry into class processes in Britain. In this comment we examine critically the methodological techniques deployed by them in the elicitation of this information. We argue that the finding is questionable and the conclusions drawn from it are unwarranted. Data from our own survey of class proce…
Who Uses Paid Domestic Labor in Australia? Choice and Constraint in Hiring Household Help
This paper investigates why some Australian households use paid help with domestic labor while others do not. Consistent with earlier studies, the analysis examines hypotheses relating to resources, objective demand, and gender attitudes. Additionally, this paper examines the impact of attitudes toward using paid domestic labor, an area that has not been investigated previously. The findings suggest that resources and objective demand provide the…
The effects of non-standard employment on work-family conflict
Over the last five decades the Australian labour market has changed profoundly, one prominent aspect being an increase in non-standard forms of employment. Using data from the first wave of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia project, this article explores whether non-standard employment is associated with greater or reduced work-family conflict among employed parents and whether experiences vary by gender. We focus on three ty…
Postmaterialist and Economic Voting in Australia, 1990-98
Recent research in Australian sociology and political science has debated the extent to which postmaterialist values and economic self-interest shape voting in federal elections. Some researchers have argued that postmaterialist values have partly displaced materialist concerns with physical security and economic well-being in Australian public life. This displacement, coupled with the adoption by major political parties of postmaterialist 'quali…
Who Decides? The Social Characteristics of Who Initiates Marital Separation
This study investigates gender differences in the associations between social characteristics and men's and women's reports of which spouse initiated marital separation. Using retrospective data on 9,147 first marriages from the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia survey (2001), we find that some social characteristics differentiated between separations initiated by wives compared to husbands, but few differences were statistically s…
Post-Familial Families and the Domestic Division of Labour
This paper examines independent living among elderly Brazilians age 65+ of different racial groups using 1980 and 2000 census microsamples. Although there was an overall increase in independent living among Brazilian elders, that increase mainly reflects change among Whites whereas there was little change among Browns or Blacks. Since Whites tend to have higher socioeconomic status than Browns or Blacks in Brazil, one might suppose that a racial …
The influence of Green parties on postmaterialist values
This paper contributes to the debate on value change by advancing a new explanation of the relationship between political parties and generational-based values in advanced industrialized nations. Through multivariate analysis of World Values and other survey data from 29 countries, we show that the relationship between generations and values tends to vary between polities dominated by major parties and those in which many parties achieve electora…
Neoliberalism, Inequality and Politics: The Changing Face of Australia
Since the early 1980s Australian public policy has undergone the most major transformation since Federation. This transformation has been underwritten by two key principles: liberalism – the view that citizens are autonomous individual actors whose interests are best served when they are free from coercive government interventions into individual action; and marketisation – the belief that free markets are arenas which best enable individual auto…
Class voting, social change, and the left in Australia, 1943-961
The relationship between class and voting choices has been the subject of controversy in recent years, especially in connection with the apparent decline of the traditional left. This paper examines class voting in Australia, focusing on three major issues: (1) changes in the overall strength of class voting (2) realignment, or changes in the relative political positions of the classes (3) the connection between the strength of class voting and s…
Expecting the unexpected: Young people’s expectations about marriage and family
Many social theorists argue that institutions such as organized religion, the nuclear family and social traditions more generally, are in a rapid and potentially terminal decline. At the same time, there has been a growing emphasis on the processes of individualization, the rise of the 'reflexive self', de-traditionalization and an emergent view of life as a 'planning project' where individuals determine their future pathways through autonomous d…
Postmaterial Values and Age: The Case of Australia
Inglehart's thesis of value change is one of the most widely discussed accounts of social and political change in advanced Western nations. This article offers a critique of Inglehart's thesis and a clarification of the Australian case. While critics of Inglehart have attacked the validity of his values measures, or sought to improve them, we use Inglehart's own values index to show that even if--as Inglehart claims--his measures are valid, the a…
Marriage breakdown in Australia: The social correlates of separation and divorce
Marriage breakdown through separation and divorce is a pervasive feature of Australian society. But little research investigates the social factors associated with marital breakdown in Australia. This study builds on and extends Australian research by using survival analysis models to examine patterns of association among temporal, life-course, attitudinal and economic factors associated with marital breakdown. Using data from the Household Incom…
Student engagement as a mediator of the effects of socio‐economic status on academic performance among secondary school students in Australia
In this article, we contribute to understanding of the mechanisms through which students’ socio‐economic family background can translate into academic performance by focusing on the concept of student engagement. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from disciplines across the social sciences, and a major nationally representative dataset from Australia, which links survey responses with administrative records on school performance, we conduct a s…
The long arm of parental advantage: Socio-economic background and parental financial transfers over adult children’s life courses
Social Networks and Subjective Wellbeing in Australia: New Evidence from a National Survey
The article draws on data from a national survey in Australia in 2014 to examine how social networks affect life satisfaction and happiness. Findings show that social network composition, social attachment, perceived social support and the volume of social resources are significantly positively associated with life satisfaction and happiness. Stress about social commitments, feeling restricted by social demands and being excluded by a social grou…
Social Networks and Occupational Attainment in Australia
This article contributes to exploring the comparative effects of market mechanisms and social networks and the interplay of human capital and social networks in western labour markets. We examine social networks and occupational attainment by using data from the 2007 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes and provide three major findings: (1) as a job search method, social networks are associated with lower earnings and occupational status and a l…
Neoliberalism, gender inequality and the Australian labour market
Over the past 25 years neoliberal philosophies have increasingly informed labour market policies in Australia that have led to increasing levels of wage decentralization. The most recent industrial relations changes aim to decentralize wage setting significantly further than has previously been the case. We argue that this is problematic for gender equity as wage decentralization will entrench rather than challenge the undervaluation of feminized…
Family, work and health: The impact of marriage, parenthood and employment on self-reported health of Australian men and women
We investigate multiple-burden and multiple-attachment hypotheses for the association among marriage, parenthood, employment and health for Australian men and women. Using longitudinal data from the Australian panel survey, 'Negotiating the Lifecourse', we find that men and women employed full time report better health than those employed part time or not employed. Previously married women report worse health than married women, but there is no a…
Socio-structural correlates of online news and information adoption/use: Implications for the digital divide
Using data from a national survey of 4270 Australians conducted in late 2003, this article merges the structural approach to media audience formation with innovation diffusion theory to explore major socio-structural factors influencing the adoption of online news and information. It finds that more internet accessibility, traditional news and information usage, and privileged socio-economic profiles are strong predictors of online news and infor…
Who thinks what about capitalism? Class consciousness and attitudes to economic institutions
Attitudes to the fundamental economic institutions of capitalism, private ownership of productive property, markets as arenas for securing economic outcomes, and working class rights to associate and to strike, are key dimensions of class consciousness. This paper investigates how class location shapes these attitudes in combination with other factors like employment sector and trade union membership. Using data from the 1995 National Social Scie…
A land of the ‘fair go’? Intergenerational earnings elasticity in Australia
This paper contributes to the existing literature on income mobility by developing and applying a two‐stage panel regression model and assessing the effects of using different levels of occupational (dis)aggregation and different earnings measures on the magnitude of father–son earnings elasticities in Australia. We find that the overall intergenerational earnings elasticity in Australia between 2001 and 2013 ranges from 0.11 to 0.30. Our preferr…
Social Class and Social Identity: A Comment on Marshall et al
The continuing persistence of strong class identification is one of the findings highlighted by Marshall, Rose, Vogler and Newby in their recent (1988) enquiry into class processes in Britain. In this comment we examine critically the methodological techniques deployed by them in the elicitation of this information. We argue that the finding is questionable and the conclusions drawn from it are unwarranted. Data from our own survey of class proce…
The Analysis of Mobility Regimes: Implementation Using SAS Procedures and an Australian Case Study
A topological model of a mobility regime is a mapping of the cells in a two-way cross-classification of data into a number of coherent sets of cells or density levels. Such density levels identify cells in the table that are characterized by similar tendencies to association or dissociation between pairs of origin and destination categories. This article demonstrates how to automate categorical model fitting of such data within the SAS statistica…
The Permeability of Class Boundaries to Intergenerational Mobility Among Men in the United States, Canada, Norway and Sweden
We explore the differential permeability of three class boundaries-the boundaries determined by property, authority and expertise-to intergenerational mobility among men in four developed capitalist economies: the United States, Canada, Norway and Sweden. We conclude: (1) In all four countries, the authority boundary is the most permeable to intergenerational mobility; (2) in the two North American countries, the patterns of permeability of class…
Class Structure and Intergenerational Class Mobility: A Comparative Analysis of Nation and Gender
This article uses a Marxist conception of class structure to develop an account of intergenerational mobility based on the viability of strategies available to parents to secure their children's future material welfare. Mobility opportunities reflect the relative capacities of parents throughout the class structure to transmit productive property, skills and organizational control to their offspring, and the barriers to entry associated with part…
Intergenerational Mobility and Class Theory: A Reply to Kingston
Kingston (1996) is incorrect to assert class theory assumes intergenerational immobility. Class theory simply assumes some class structural mechanisms but such mechanisms do not presuppose immobility. Relative mobility patterns illustrate one fundamental way that class mechanisms operate and class-structured relative mobility patterns coexist alongside substantial absolute mobility for good reason. Kingston's preference for absolute over relative…
Satisfaction with Housework: Examining the Paradox
This paper examines men's and women's levels of satisfaction with the domestic division of labour. In most households women continue to undertake the bulk of childcare and housework duties and consequently spend significantly greater amounts of time on domestic labour than men. Men report high levels of satisfaction with these arrangements, but surprisingly we find that almost half of our sample of women also report satisfaction with these arrang…
Class Attainment Among British Men A Multivariate Extension of the Casmin Model of Intergenerational Class Mobility
The CASMIN Project is arguably the most influential contemporary study of class mobility in the world. However, CASMIN results with respect to weak vertical status effects on class mobility have been extensively criticized. Drawing on arguments about how to model vertical mobility, Hout and Hauser (1992) show that class mobility is strongly determined by vertical socioeconomic differences. This paper extends these arguments by estimating the CASM…
Who thinks what about capitalism? Class consciousness and attitudes to economic institutions
Attitudes to the fundamental economic institutions of capitalism, private ownership of productive property, markets as arenas for securing economic outcomes, and working class rights to associate and to strike, are key dimensions of class consciousness. This paper investigates how class location shapes these attitudes in combination with other factors like employment sector and trade union membership. Using data from the 1995 National Social Scie…
Class voting, social change, and the left in Australia, 1943-961
The relationship between class and voting choices has been the subject of controversy in recent years, especially in connection with the apparent decline of the traditional left. This paper examines class voting in Australia, focusing on three major issues: (1) changes in the overall strength of class voting (2) realignment, or changes in the relative political positions of the classes (3) the connection between the strength of class voting and s…
Postmaterialist and Economic Voting in Australia, 1990-98
Recent research in Australian sociology and political science has debated the extent to which postmaterialist values and economic self-interest shape voting in federal elections. Some researchers have argued that postmaterialist values have partly displaced materialist concerns with physical security and economic well-being in Australian public life. This displacement, coupled with the adoption by major political parties of postmaterialist 'quali…
Reconfigurations of Class and Gender
Introduction Mark Western and Janeen Baxter 2. Foundations of class analysis: a marxist perspective Erik Olin Wright 3. A conceptual menu for studying the interconnections of class and gender Erik Olin Wright 4. The gendered restructuring of the middle classes Rosemary Crompton 5. Who works? comparing labor market practices Wallace Clement 6. The links between paid and unpaid work: Australia and Sweden in the 1980s and 1990s Mark Western and Jane…
Postmaterial Values and Age: The Case of Australia
Inglehart's thesis of value change is one of the most widely discussed accounts of social and political change in advanced Western nations. This article offers a critique of Inglehart's thesis and a clarification of the Australian case. While critics of Inglehart have attacked the validity of his values measures, or sought to improve them, we use Inglehart's own values index to show that even if--as Inglehart claims--his measures are valid, the a…
The Experience of Middle Australia: The Dark Side of Economic Reform
Post-Familial Families and the Domestic Division of Labour
This paper examines independent living among elderly Brazilians age 65+ of different racial groups using 1980 and 2000 census microsamples. Although there was an overall increase in independent living among Brazilian elders, that increase mainly reflects change among Whites whereas there was little change among Browns or Blacks. Since Whites tend to have higher socioeconomic status than Browns or Blacks in Brazil, one might suppose that a racial …
Marriage breakdown in Australia: The social correlates of separation and divorce
Marriage breakdown through separation and divorce is a pervasive feature of Australian society. But little research investigates the social factors associated with marital breakdown in Australia. This study builds on and extends Australian research by using survival analysis models to examine patterns of association among temporal, life-course, attitudinal and economic factors associated with marital breakdown. Using data from the Household Incom…
Family, work and health: The impact of marriage, parenthood and employment on self-reported health of Australian men and women
We investigate multiple-burden and multiple-attachment hypotheses for the association among marriage, parenthood, employment and health for Australian men and women. Using longitudinal data from the Australian panel survey, 'Negotiating the Lifecourse', we find that men and women employed full time report better health than those employed part time or not employed. Previously married women report worse health than married women, but there is no a…
Who Decides? The Social Characteristics of Who Initiates Marital Separation
This study investigates gender differences in the associations between social characteristics and men's and women's reports of which spouse initiated marital separation. Using retrospective data on 9,147 first marriages from the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia survey (2001), we find that some social characteristics differentiated between separations initiated by wives compared to husbands, but few differences were statistically s…
Neoliberalism, Inequality and Politics: The Changing Face of Australia
Since the early 1980s Australian public policy has undergone the most major transformation since Federation. This transformation has been underwritten by two key principles: liberalism – the view that citizens are autonomous individual actors whose interests are best served when they are free from coercive government interventions into individual action; and marketisation – the belief that free markets are arenas which best enable individual auto…
Socio-structural correlates of online news and information adoption/use: Implications for the digital divide
Using data from a national survey of 4270 Australians conducted in late 2003, this article merges the structural approach to media audience formation with innovation diffusion theory to explore major socio-structural factors influencing the adoption of online news and information. It finds that more internet accessibility, traditional news and information usage, and privileged socio-economic profiles are strong predictors of online news and infor…
Who Uses Paid Domestic Labor in Australia? Choice and Constraint in Hiring Household Help
This paper investigates why some Australian households use paid help with domestic labor while others do not. Consistent with earlier studies, the analysis examines hypotheses relating to resources, objective demand, and gender attitudes. Additionally, this paper examines the impact of attitudes toward using paid domestic labor, an area that has not been investigated previously. The findings suggest that resources and objective demand provide the…
Neoliberalism, gender inequality and the Australian labour market
Over the past 25 years neoliberal philosophies have increasingly informed labour market policies in Australia that have led to increasing levels of wage decentralization. The most recent industrial relations changes aim to decentralize wage setting significantly further than has previously been the case. We argue that this is problematic for gender equity as wage decentralization will entrench rather than challenge the undervaluation of feminized…
The effects of non-standard employment on work-family conflict
Over the last five decades the Australian labour market has changed profoundly, one prominent aspect being an increase in non-standard forms of employment. Using data from the first wave of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia project, this article explores whether non-standard employment is associated with greater or reduced work-family conflict among employed parents and whether experiences vary by gender. We focus on three ty…
The influence of Green parties on postmaterialist values
This paper contributes to the debate on value change by advancing a new explanation of the relationship between political parties and generational-based values in advanced industrialized nations. Through multivariate analysis of World Values and other survey data from 29 countries, we show that the relationship between generations and values tends to vary between polities dominated by major parties and those in which many parties achieve electora…
A stalled revolution? Gender role attitudes in Australia, 1986–2005
This paper examines trends over time in attitudes to gender equality in Australia. We use data from repeated cross-sectional surveys in Australia to investigate trends in beliefs about men’s and women’s work and family roles between 1986 and 2005. We find that men are consistently more conservative than women, that younger cohorts tend to be less conservative than older cohorts, but those born between 1960 and 1980 are more egalitarian on some is…
Overstating Value Change: Question Ordering in the Postmaterial Values Index
In much of his research on intergenerational value change, Inglehart uses a four-item index to calculate levels of postmaterial and material value orientations. Latter waves of the World Values Surveys administer a 12-item values index in which the original four-item index is embedded. In some of his research, Inglehart compares values estimated from stand-alone and embedded indices. Using a split sample design, we administered two versions of th…
Sociology (38 works) · Political science (27 works) · Economics (24 works) · Psychology (18 works) · Demographic economics (16 works) · Law (12 works) · Social science (12 works) · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics (11 works) · Demography (10 works) · Computer Science (9 works)