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Life Course of Australian Families

Wolcott, I. (1996). Families in later life: experiences and expectations of 50-70 year olds. Unpublished paper presented at 5th Australian Family Research Conference, November.

Between the ages of 50-70 participation in paid employment will have ended for many family members or retirement contemplated in the near future. This paper aims to explore the meaning and role of family relationships in the lives of men and women aged 50-70 who are retired or not in the labour force. It will examine how family relationships have influenced retirement decisions, current living arrangements and activities and future expectation and planning for later life. Decisions about later life, particularly those around family relationships and expectations, have implications for government policies associated with income support and community services for the elderly, employment conditions and housing. Data used in this paper are based on a limited sample and preliminary analysis of the Australian Institute of family Studies Later Life Family Study which is part of the larger AIFS Australian Family Life Course Study conducted in August-September 1996. (Author abstract)

Family Formation, Breakdown and Re-Formation
Family Law Reform Evaluation Project

Funder, K. and Smyth, B. (1996). Family Law Evaluation Project 1996: parental responsibilities: two national surveys. Attorney-General's Department, Canberra, 324p.

This study provides a national benchmark on attitudes to parental responsibility against which comparisons can be made in subsequent years after the introduction of the Family Law Reform Act (1995), Part VII - Children. The study was commissioned by the Commonwealth Attorney General's Department and carried out by the Australian Institute of Family Studies. Data were obtained from a general population sample comprising 1246 persons aged 18 years and over. Further data came from a national sample of 495 divorced parents of dependent children who separated after January 1988. The report is in two parts. Part One comprises the results of the surveys, and discussion of the implications of the findings for family law and social policy. Chapters are: Family law and attitudes to parental responsibility; Design, samples and procedures; Attitudes of the general population sample; Divorced parents' attitudes to parental responsibilities; What divorced parents do for children; Meanings: custody, access and children's rights. Part Two of the report contains the data tables, each with a short written summary. They are included in part as a resource to inform policy issues which are not the primary focus of the report, on many of which no other such national data exist.

Funder, K. (1996). Relative poverty: family and child perspectives. In: Enhancing access to justice: Family Court of Australia Second National Conference, 20-23 September 1995. Sydney, NSW: Family Court of Australia, p331-335

The author considers poverty in relation to lone parents (mainly women), examining family distribution of poverty, gender and poverty, wage rates, superannuation and housing. Comments from children who were part of an Institute study demonstrate the children's appreciation of fairness and justice in arrangements made for them after divorce. The importance of society valuing unpaid work properly at the rate of market work in marriages is shown to be significant not just for the safeguarding of financial settlements and child support but because children learn through the application of law, their sense of relative deprivation, and what standards of fairness they should apply in their own lives.

Parenting and Young Children
Parenting-21 Study

Kolar, V. and McGurk, H. (1996). Parenting-21: preliminary findings from the Anglo-Australian sub-sample. Unpublished paper presented at the 5th Australian Family Research Conference, November

This paper was presented as part of the symposium 'Parenting with young children: the Parenting-21 Project', which provided an overview of the Institute's comparative study of the relationships between, on the one hand, parents' beliefs, ideas and understanding about the nature of children and childhood, and their child rearing practices on the other. Parenting-21 is part of the Culture, Families and Schools International Research Consortium, and consequently the results of similar studies conducted in Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, United States and Poland will eventually be used to identify cross-cultural differences and similarities between ethnic groups. Based on preliminary results from analysis of one of the ten instruments that form the basis of the project, the current paper aims to convey the 'flavour' of Parenting-21 as it relates to the sample of Anglo-Australian parents. The authors discuss how parents were recruited and who they are, describe the particular measure used in the data collection, and then present some preliminary results.

Ageing, Later Life Families and Family Care
Later Life Families

Millward, C. (1996). Aspects of grandparenting. Unpublished paper presented at the 5th Australian Family Research Conference, November.

This paper draws upon the viewpoint of people aged 50-70 years who were interviewed for the new Australian Institute of Family Studies Later Life Families Study. This time of life encompasses a wide variety of life styles and stages as well as capturing many people who have both adult children and grandchildren. The paper examines different experiences of grandparenting according to gender, marital status and work status. Respondents are not elderly, but in later middle age, so many are still involved in paid employment, while others are retired. Many are juggling family and work commitments, while also being actively engaged in community activities. Some are partnered, while others are widowed, separated or divorced. The paper compares the involvement, importance, satisfaction and strains of grandparenting for men and women, for partnered versus non-partnered people and for employed versus retired (or at home) women. Some questions asked are whether or not grandparenting is more important to women than men, whether employed grandmothers are as likely as non- employed to look after grandchildren and whether of not employed grandmothers find grandparenting more stressful than others. (Author abstract)

Wolcott, I. (1996). Families in later life: experiences and expectations of 50-70 year olds. Unpublished paper presented at 5th Australian Family Research Conference, November.

Australian Living Standards
Newtown Revisited

Bryson, L., Winter, I. and Lazzarini, V. (1995). Revisiting an Australian Newtown: the impoverishment of the working class? Unpublished paper presented to the Class and Inequality Session, Australian Sociological Association Conference, University of Newcastle, December, 23p.

This paper reports work in progress of a journey back to the site of one of Australia's earliest sociological studies of suburban life, entitled Newtown. The study focuses on a broad spectrum of aspects of life in the suburb and is concerned with both change and continuity. This article concentrates on change and continuity in employment and the industrial nexus of the suburb, for the general reason that employment is a fundamental factor of life in any western capitalist society, and also because of the key role that industry played in the establishment of the suburb and the significant restructuring its industries have since undergone as part of the global integration of the Australian economy.

Winter, I. (1995). 'An Australian Newtown revisited: 1966 and 1991', Family Matters no.40 Autumn: 17

In 1966 Lois Bryson and Faith Thompson were invited to carry out a community study in 'Newtown', a newly planned suburb on the fringe of Melbourne. As part of the Australian Living Standards Study (ALSS), the Australian Institute of Family Studies collected data of a similar nature in Newtown during 1991. This article briefly describes a new draw on these data in order to explore how family and community life have changed in Newtown between 1966 and 1991.

Capital Gains, Homeownership and Inequality Project

Burbidge, A. (In preparation) The measurement of capital gains and housing benefits

There is considerable diversity in the housing literature on the concept of capital gains and their importance for the accumulation of wealth by owner occupiers and impact on economic inequality. This article reviews the competing concepts of capital gains and the approaches used in recent studies to the measurement of capital gains. It is argued that it is important to distinguish alterations and improvements from other factors increasing property prices. A definition and method of measurement is proposed which focuses on changes in land values permits comparison between areas of new and old housing in rates of capital gains and which thus better enables assessment of housing's contribution to current trends in economic and social inequality and the transmission of wealth between generations.

The article goes on to examine and quantify a range of other benefits and costs associated with homeownership in an attempt to arrive at a methodology for assessing the economic benefits of homeownership.

Burbidge, A. (In preparation) Winners and losers in the housing market: Which groups?

This paper arises from a joint project undertaken in 1995 by AIFS and AHURI - the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. A companion article, 'the concept and measurement of capital gains and housing benefits', sets out the methodology used for calculating capital gains and housing benefits. Both are extracts from a larger report 'housing and capital gains project'.

This article is in four sections. The first section briefly outlines the debate about the role of homeownership in economic inequality and reviews the methods used in the literature to calculate capital gains. Section two outlines the data used in this study and describes the advantages of the methodology used here. Section three uses the records of individual properties to identify variations in the levels of capital gains secured by different socio economic groups in the property boom of the 1980's. Section four extends the analysis of the distribution of capital gains to include a broad range of financial benefits and costs of homeownership. It asks how big were the benefits from homeownerships during the eighties, after allowing for inflation, and how evenly were the benefits spread? To what extent did the benefits of ownership reflect and reinforce socio-economic inequalities, to what extent did the changes in values provide significant benefits to low income groups? The paper concludes with some comments on policy implications of the findings.

Burbidge, A. (In preparation) Winners and losers in the housing market: Which Areas?

This article is in four sections. The first section briefly outlines the debate about the role of homeownership in economic inequality and reviews the methods used in the literature to calculate capital gains. Section two outlines the data used in this study and describes the advantages of the methodology used here. Section three uses the records of individual properties to identify variations in capital gains by areas in the property boom and, where data permit, in the recession which followed. Section four extends the analysis of the distribution of capital gains to include a broad range of financial benefits and costs of homeownership. It asks how big were the benefits from homeownerships during the eighties, after allowing for inflation, and how evenly were the benefits spread? To what extent did the benefits of ownership reflect and reinforce socio-economic inequalities, to what extent did the changes in values provide significant benefits to low income groups? The paper concludes with some comments on policy implications of the findings.

Legislative, Policy and Program Monitoring

Diary of social legislation and policy 1995. Melbourne, Vic: Australian Institute of Family Studies, Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 1996, 110p

This edition of the annual diary records changes made during 1995 in Commonwealth government social policy and legislation. It provides a reference for researchers and workers in government and service organisations by drawing together information from a range of sources relating to the development of new policy and legislation, funding of government programs, and recommendations for change in legislation from reviews, inquiries and commissioned research. Areas covered by chapters in the diary are: education; employment and training; family law; health; housing; human services; immigration; social security. The chapters are compiled by staff from the Australian Council for Educational Research, the Centre for labour Studies, University of Adelaide, the Australian Institute of Family Studies, Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, the Bureau of Immigration, Multicultural and Polulation Research, and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

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