AIFS staff presentation

Sydney, 12 August 2011
COAG Reform Council Expert Speakers Seminar Series

Families living in regional, rural and remote Australia: A tyranny of distance and disadvantage

Professor Alan Hayes
Director, Australian Institute of Family Studies

Dr Ben Edwards
Senior Research Fellow, Australian Institute of Family Studies

View presentation slides (PDF 1.9 MB)

Slide outline

  1. Families living in regional, rural and remote Australia: A tyranny of distance and disadvantage
    • Professor Alan Hayes and Dr Ben Edwards
    • COAG Reform Council, 12 August 2011
  2. Acknowledgements
    • Some of this research has been funded by the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA); Carers Australia with support from Commonwealth Financial Planning
    • This presentation uses unit record data from Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). The study is conducted in partnership between the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA), the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The findings and views reported in this paper are those of the author and should not be attributed to FaHCSIA, AIFS or the ABS.
  3. Acknowledgements
    • The presentation draws on the collective efforts of:
    • Dr Ben Edwards
    • Dr Jennifer Baxter
    • Professor Matthew Gray
    • Professor Alan Hayes
    • Associate Professor Boyd Hunter
  4. Socio-economic change in regional Australia
    • Large decline in population from 1900s - 1970s thereafter stable
    • Decline in people employed in agriculture, price for wheat, wool and barley fell in the last few decades
    • Farm size increased and number of farms decreased
    • Internal migration away from agriculture areas to tourism and mining regions
    • 52% of 170 disadvantaged locations identified by Vinson's Dropping off the edge were rural
  5. Child development in regional Australia
    • Limited research in Australia and internationally
    • Some indication that children in major cities do better than in the regions on:
    • Cognitive but not social-emotional (Baxter et al. 2011)
    • Infant mortality (AIHW, 2009)
    • NAPLAN (ACARA, 2010)
  6. Families in regional, rural and remote Australia
    Jennifer Baxter, Matthew Gray and Alan Hayes
    (publication cover)
  7. Remoteness
    • Accessibility Remoteness Index Australia 2006
    • Map of Australia showing locations of major cities, inner regional, outer regional, remote and very remote areas
  8. Household type, by geographic remoteness, Census 2006
    • Graph
  9. Family type, by geographic remoteness, Census 2006
    • Graph
  10. Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children
    • National longitudinal study
    • Measures all aspects of children's development
    • 2 cohorts of children in 2004
      • B cohort - aged 0-1 years
      • K cohort - aged 4-5 years
    • 10,000 families recruited
    • Funded for 8 waves (to 2018-19)
  11. Study design
    • Nationally representative of all Australian children in selected age ranges
    • Cross sequential design
    • Figure showing Age of cohorts, Waves 1-8
  12. Children's preferences about how they spend their free time, by gender and geographic remoteness, LSAC 2008
    • Graph
  13. Amount of time children spend outside, by gender and geographic remoteness, LSAC 2008
    • Graph
  14. Families in regional, rural and remote Australia
    • Parents' expectations of children's future educational level, by gender and geographic remoteness
      Note: As reported by parents of children aged 8–9 years
    • Graph - Source: LSAC 2008
  15. Families in regional, rural and remote Australia
    • Children's physical, social emotional and learning outcomes, by geographic remoteness, 8–9 year olds
      Note: Percentages are based on the top 15% of children in each of the outcome indices
    • Graph - Source: LSAC Outcome Index (Misson et al., in press)
  16. Neighbourhood socioeconomic status and children's development
    • International studies suggest neighbourhood SES is associated with:
      • Social and emotional
      • Cognitive and learning
      • Antisocial behaviour and chances of becoming a teenage parent
    • Very little is known about neighbourhood disadvantage in regional areas
  17. Focus of research
    • A tyranny of distance or neighbourhood disadvantage?
    • Compares children/parents/families according to region:
      • Major cities, inner regional, outer regional; by
      • Whether disadvantaged (based on SLA unemployment rate)
    • Provides some information about different contexts across these areas
    • Analyses child outcomes across these areas;
    • Multivariate analyses will be used to draw these data together
  18. Developmental contexts: binge drinking
    • Graph - Mothers binge drinking
    • Graph - Fathers binge drinking
  19. Developmental contexts: Parental support
    • Graph - Often need support but could not get it
    • Graph - Do not get any or enough help from family and friends
  20. Developmental contexts: Involvement in community groups or volunteering
    • Graph
  21. Child outcomes: Cognitive
    • Receptive vocabulary -Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test III (PPVT)
      What number, or point to the picture, that best tells the meaning of talon?
    • Non-verbal reasoning -Matrix Reasoning from the WISC IV (MR)
  22. Child emotional or behavioural problems
    • Social and emotional, Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)
      • Hyperactivity
      • Conduct Problems
      • Emotional Symptoms
      • Peer Problems
    • We use parent's reports
    • Use cut offs to indicate high risk of clinically significant problems
  23. Physical: Overweight or obese
    • BMI - weight/(height2) and expressed as kg/m2.
    • Could not be calculated for the B cohort at Wave 1, because of the difficulty in measuring infants aged 0-1 years.
    • Children were classified as overweight or obese according to International Obesity TaskForce (IOTF) age- and sex-specific BMI cutpoints (Cole, Bellizzi, Flegal, & Dietz, 2000.
    • All other children were classified as normal weight (some were underweight).
  24. Analytic strategy
    • RE regression
    • Model 1 (Base): Remoteness, disadvantage
    • Model 2 (Add demographics)
    • Model 3 (Add neighbourhood and social contexts)
    • Model 4 (Add parent and family)
  25. A tyranny of distance or disadvantage?
    • Lower receptive vocabulary and matrix reasoning in inner and outer regional areas compared to major cities but disadvantage was not significant after other variables were included.
    • There were persistent differences for children living in a disadvantaged area difference on emotional or behavioural problems but not by remoteness
    • Neither differences by remoteness or disadvantaged for obesity once other factors taken into account
  26. Caveats
    • Remoteness and disadvantage measure have some limitations
    • Correlation not cause and differences are small
    • Many of the initial differences accounted for by child and family demographic variables suggesting 'selection' into areas a factor
    • Still to examine trajectories of development
  27. The tyranny of distance? Carers in regional and remote Australia
    • Ben Edwards, Matthew Gray, Jennifer Baxter, Australian Institute of Family Studies
    • Boyd Hunter, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University
  28. Commonwealth Financial Planning
    The Tyranny of Distance? (Publication cover)
  29. Three areas
    1. Geography of caring
    2. Impact of living in rural and remote areas on carers
    3. Drought and carers
  30. Geography of caring
    • Remoteness:
      • Major cities
      • Inner regional
      • Outer regional
      • Remote and
      • Very remote
    • Census 2006 only data source for small area estimates
    • Statistical local areas

    • Map of Australia showing percentage of people who are carers in major cities, inner regional, outer regional, remote and very remote areas
  32. Proportion of indigenous people who are carers, by state and region, 2006
    • Graph - Source: Census 2006
  33. Impact of living in rural and remote areas on carers
    • Compare carers and non-carers in major cities, inner regional and outer regional/remote
    • Using 2006 General Social Survey
    • Account for demographic differences using regression models
  34. Difficulty accessing services, by carer status and region
    • Graph
  35. Difficulty accessing services because of service availability, transport or distance difficulties or inadequacy of services by carer status and region
    • Graph
  36. Profound, severe or moderate disability, by carer status and region
    • Graph
  37. Employment rates, by carer status and region
    • Graph
  38. Drought and carers
    • Frequency and duration of drought will increase due to climate change.
    • SLA data on rainfall deficiency
      • Drought (0 to 10th percentile of rainfall over the last three years compared to the last 100)
      • Below average (11th to 49th)
      • Above average (50th to 100th)
    • Employment population ratios for carers and non-carers for SLAs (2006 Census)
  39. Demographic characteristics, by carer status and rainfall, 2006
    Rainfall Carer
    %     		Non-carer
    %     		Difference
    (Carer minus non-carer)
    %
    Female
    Above average 58.0 46.4 11.7
    Below average 60.6 47.3 13.3
    Drought 61.3 47.4 13.9
    Partnered
    Above average 66.6 57.9 8.7
    Below average 68.3 59.4 8.9
    Drought 70.8 61.2 9.6
    Completed Year 12
    Above average 31.2 32.7 -1.6
    Below average 30.8 30.6 0.2
    Drought 30.2 30.8 -0.6
    Indigenous
    Above average 7.1 5.6 1.5
    Below average 3.9 3.2 0.7
    Drought 2.3 1.7 0.5
    Have not changed address during last five years
    Above average 55.7 50.9 4.8
    Below average 58.0 53.3 4.7
    Drought 53.0 47.5 5.5
  40. Employment population ratio, by carer status and rainfall
    • Graph
  41. Part-time and full-time employment population ratios, by carer status and rainfall
    • Graph
  42. Key findings
    • Large burden of care for indigenous people in remote areas
    • Difficulties in accessing services in outer regional and remote areas
    • High rates of disability in outer regional and remote areas
    • Carers are vulnerable to economic shocks like drought
  43. Summary
    • With distance comes disadvantage, not just in terms of remoteness but also socio-economic disadvantage
    • The contexts and settings in which children in the regions live are different and influence their development, health and wellbeing as well as that of their families
    • The burden of care occurs against the backdrop of limited support from formal services but increased availability of informal support networks

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