#41 September 2013 - Melbourne Institute News

Melbourne Institute News September 2013 ISSN 1442-9500 (print)

ISSN 1442-9519 (online)

Print Post Approved PP381667/01204

Issue 41

The Impact of Preschool Attendance on Year 3 NAPLAN Scores

The Impact of Pre-school Attendance on Year 3 NAPLAN Scores Page 1

Australia One Recession Away from Disability Benefit Blowout Page 3

Access to the Journeys Home Data Page 3

The Tyranny of Time Page 4

Professor Richard Freeman Visits the Melbourne Institute Page 4

Investor Confidence Recovering Page 5

Melbourne Institute Policy Briefs Series Page 6

Education, Social Background and Cognitive Ability: New Book Released Page 7

HILDA Survey Research Conference Page 8

This study analyses the impact of attendance at Australian pre-school programs in the year prior to formal schooling on later literacy and numeracy outcomes, measured by NAPLAN scores in Year 3. It also examines differences in the benefits from pre-school attendance according to the type of qualification held by the pre-school teacher.

This research is a result of a partnership arrangement between the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) and the Melbourne Institute.

The research found that attendance at pre-school has a significant positive impact on later NAPLAN outcomes, particularly in the domains of Numeracy, Reading and Spelling. There is a direct causal effect of pre-school attendance equivalent to 10 to 20 NAPLAN points or 15 to 20 weeks of schooling at the Year 3 level, three years after attending pre-school. Furthermore, children whose pre-school teacher had a diploma or degree in early childhood education or child care gained the most from attending pre-school — the level and specialisation of pre-school teacher qualifications matter.

Using data from the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Children (LSAC), the study examined the impact of preschool attendance for children who were aged between 4 and 5 in 2004 and in Year 3 in 2008, a sample of 2,229 children from across Australia. Students’ literacy and numeracy skills in Year 3 are measured by their achievement on the National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests for the domains of Numeracy, Reading, Spelling, Writing and Grammar.

Compared to children who did not attend pre-school in 2004, average NAPLAN scores were 20 to 30 points higher among children who had attended some type of pre-school program (Figure 1).

www.melbourneinstitute.com Page 1 - Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research

The Impact of Pre-school Attendance on Year 3 NAPLAN Scores (continued) 440

Figure 1: Average NAPLAN Scores in Year 3, by Pre-school Attendance Pre-school

25

No pre-school

380 360 340

ATU

15 10 5

320

0

300 Numeracy

Reading

Spelling

Figure 2: Comparison of Benefits of Pre-school Attendance, Controlling for Innate Ability

20

No contol for ability With control for ability

15

10

5

0 Numeracy

Reading

Spelling

Numeracy

Writing Grammar and punctuation

After controlling for a rich set of socio-demographic characteristics, there is a significant positive association between pre-school attendance and Year 3 NAPLAN test scores. The magnitude of the effect varies according to the domain being considered, with the most significant effects in the domains of Reading, Spelling and Numeracy. Even after controlling for the ability level of the child when he/she was in pre-school, there are still significant effects for the domains of Reading, Spelling and Numeracy, but no significant effect for Writing or Grammar (Figure 2).

NAPLAN points

ATT

20

400

NAPLAN points

NAPLAN points

420

Figure 3: Average Treatment Effects on Treated and Untreated

Writing Grammar and punctuation

Estimation of the Average Treatment Effect on Treated (ATT) using kernel-based propensity score matching indicates that children who attended pre-school score 18 to 20 points significantly higher in Reading, Spelling and Numeracy compared to children who did not attend pre-school. For Writing, the estimated ATT is around 13 points; and for Grammar, the estimated ATT is not statistically significant (Figure 3). These ATT estimates are substantial, given that one year of schooling at the Year 3 level is represented by 52 NAPLAN points, with pre-school amounting to 30–40 per cent of the learning impact of one additional year of schooling, three years after the fact. The Average Treatment Effect on

Reading

Spelling

Writing

Grammar and punctuation

Untreated (ATU) is significant for all five domains, and higher than the ATT. This result implies children who did not attend pre-school would have benefitted substantially from attending.

Over 90 per cent of children in the 2004 LSAC sample attended a pre-school or kindergarten program of some sort in the year before starting school. However, there is likely to be considerable variation in the type and quality of programs attended. For this reason, the effects of specific pre-school teacher qualifications on Year 3 NAPLAN outcomes were estimated. When the ATT is estimated using the group of children whose pre-school teacher had a degree or diploma qualification specialising in early childhood education or child care as the treatment group and the group who did not attend pre-school at all as the control group, the estimated benefits range from 14 points for Numeracy and Spelling to 18 points for Reading. This result supports the conclusion that there are significant benefits to be gained from pre-school teachers who are specifically trained in developmentally appropriate teaching practices for young children. The long-run causal impacts of early childhood education and the additional benefit of highly qualified pre-school teachers on NAPLAN test scores three years later demonstrate the importance and value of Australia’s preschool system.

This research is based on the 2013 research report, The Causal Impact of Pre-school Participation and Teacher Qualifications on Year 3 NAPLAN Cognitive Tests, authored

by Diana Warren and John P. Haisken-DeNew. The report was developed through the Research and Evaluation Partnerships between DEECD and the Melbourne Institute.

A summary paper is available from the DEECD website at <www.education.vic.gov.au/about/research/Pages/publications. aspx>.

Page 2 - Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research

Australia One Recession Away from Disability Benefit Blowout The relative generosity of Australia’s Disability Support Pension (DSP) has been a factor in its recent rapid growth and Australia is one recession away from a disability benefit blowout according to research published in the September issue of the Australian Economic Review.

Currently, the research outlines, over Economic Review 800,000 individuals are in receipt of the DSP with this expected to rise to 1 million within the next 10 years. In 2012–2013 DSP payments alone totalled $14.9 billion.

The

Australian

Volume 46

Number 3

September 2013

Demystifying the Chinese Economy Justin Yifu Lin

Contributed Articles Modelling House Prices across Sydney Peter Abelson, Roselyne Joyeux and Stephane Mahuteau The Costs of Unpaid Higher Education Contribution Scheme Debts of Graduates Working Abroad Bruce Chapman and Tim Higgins Local Government Efficiency: Evidence from Western Australia James Fogarty and Amin Mugera Who Gains from Foreign Direct Investment-Induced Technology Spillovers? Horizontal and Vertical Linkages Akinori Tomohara and Kazuhiko Yokota Policy Forum: Disability Care and Support Introduction Ross Williams Development and Principles of the National Disability Insurance Scheme John Walsh and Sarah Johnson National Disability Insurance Scheme Funding: The Case for Hypothecation Henry Ergas Explaining the Growth in the Number of Recipients of the Disability Support Pension in Australia Duncan McVicar and Roger Wilkins Is Australia One Recession Away from a Disability Blowout? Lessons from Other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Countries Richard V. Burkhauser, Mary C. Daly and Brian T. Lucking Impacts of Demand-Driven Reforms on Access to Vocational Education and Training for People with Disability Cain Polidano

The study by Professor Duncan McVicar and Associate Professor Roger Wilkins identified Australia’s ageing population, its population growth and increases in the female retirement age as factors in the accelerated growth of DSP recipients in the last 15 years, but also discovered two other notable factors driving this rapid growth in DSP payments.

Data Survey: PanelWhiz and the Australian Longitudinal Data Infrastructure in Economics Markus H. Hahn and John P. Haisken-DeNew

For the Student: A Chinese Perspective on Economic Development: The Views of Justin Yifu Lin Ross Garnaut

“Changes to the eligibility criteria of other welfare payments such as New Start Allowance (NSA) and the fact that DSP has become more generous relative to other welfare payments are significant factors in this DSP payment increase,” highlighted Associate Professor Wilkins of the Melbourne Institute.

Specifically the research found that over an 18-year period to 2011 adult full-time weekly earnings at the lower scale increased by a factor of just under 2, whereas the maximum DSP payment increased by a factor of 2.4. The research also highlighted that the level of DSP payments increased substantially relative to the level of the minimum wage over the period from 2000 to 2011 and particularly from 2008 onwards.

The study found that there has been an overall decline in welfare receipt amongst people with disability but this has coincided with an increase in those obtaining DSP payments. “A major shift from other payments to DSP has occurred as reforms to other income-support payments such as increased conditionality for the NSA and Parenting Payment have had an effect,” commented Associate Professor Wilkins.

This edition of the Australian Economic Review contains a specific focus on disability care and additional research argues that Australia’s current DSP program is vulnerable to the same forces that caused unsustainable

disability support program growth in the United States, Sweden and the Netherlands and that Australia is one recession away from a disability blowout. This research,

by Professor Richard Burkhauser, Dr Mary Daly and Brian Lucking, highlighted how historically increases in unemployment have triggered large flows of unemployed older workers onto disability benefits.

“If the economic winds change Australia will have a larger pool of eligible disability payment recipients and could be facing a disability benefit blowout. Australia must learn from the reforms currently underway in other countries,” said Associate Professor Wilkins.

The September issue of the Australian Economic Review is available from <wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/aere>.

Access to the Journeys Home Data Journeys Home is an important new national panel survey examining the living and housing challenges that people may be facing. It is funded by the Australian Government Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and run by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne.

The study allows for analysis of the diverse social, economic and personal factors that are related to housing stability. Journeys Home will help policy makers, academics and service providers to understand the needs and experiences of Australians in the field of housing and will help all levels of government to provide better services to people who have living and housing challenges.

Researchers are now able to apply to the Australian Government for access to the first three waves of the Journeys Home data (with further releases being made at six-monthly intervals). There are three types of data release: a general release, a limited release and an overseas release. Information on how to access the data is available from <www.melbourneinstitute.com/ journeys_home/research/dataaccess.html>.

The Melbourne Institute has also released Journeys Home Research Report No. 3, ‘Findings from Waves 1 to 3’, which is also available on the Journeys Home website.

Page 3 - Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research

The Tyranny of Time The tyranny of time was the subject of this year’s Downing Lecture presented by the effervescent Professor Daniel Hamermesh to a large crowd at the University of Melbourne.

University of Texas Professor Hamermesh, the winner of this year’s IZA Prize in Labor Economics, explored how time is the scarcest commodity. In Australia, time becomes scarcer and scarcer as you age and has been so over a 50-year period, Professor Hamermesh outlined.

Also illustrating the time-poor scenarios in countries across the world, he stated that “the world has got richer and richer but we have had less and less time to spend our dollars”.

Work, household work, personal activities and leisure all eat into our time and Professor Hamermesh illustrated the depth of this across the world and among genders. “Time spent working is not the ‘biggie’, no it is personal followed by leisure time,” stated Professor Hamermesh. Sleep, work and television watching are the three main activities that take up the most of our time, with the United States being the country that watches the most television.

From left: Professor Paul Kofman, Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark, Professor Daniel Hamermesh and Professor Bill Griffiths

“In rich Anglo Saxon countries men and women were doing the same amount of work at the turn of the century” added Professor Hamermesh, who also stated that in both poor countries and Catholic countries women do more work than men. In Australia and the United States they do equal amounts of work.

Professor Hamermesh also provided the audience with empirical evidence to assist in self-evaluation to answer two questions: “Are the activities you choose really worth the time you spend on them?” and “How could your spare time be better used?”

Log on to <benews.unimelb.edu> to watch and listen to the Downing Lecture and for news related to the Melbourne Institute.

Professor Richard Freeman Visits the Melbourne Institute How much does a nation spend on science? What kind of science? How much from private versus public funding? These are all questions that visiting Harvard economist Professor Richard Freeman explored recently with Melbourne Institute staff as they participated in the wider debate surrounding science and innovation policy — a hot topic for international policy makers at present.

From left: Professor Richard Freeman and Professor Paul Jensen

Considered one of the world’s leading economists and an expert in science policy, Professor Freeman was invited to Australia by the Melbourne Institute to drive discussion on the nation’s own science and innovation policy. During his visit, Professor Freeman engaged with policy makers at both the state and federal level, spoke at numerous events and featured at an invitation-only roundtable held at the University of Melbourne, which attracted high-level scientists and policy experts from around the state.

The Institute’s Professor Beth Webster acknowledged the importance of Professor Freeman’s visit, “Professor Freeman is on the forefront of moves internationally that aim to improve our knowledge about how we can make our investments into science and technology a tool for global competitiveness. Australia would gain enormously from being part of this movement and we are fortunate to have Professor Freeman visit us”.

In order to crystallise some of the ideas generated during his visit, the Melbourne Institute’s Professor Paul Jensen sat down for a recorded interview with Professor Freeman to discuss this ‘Science of Science’. This discussion is available online at <www.ipria.org/>.

Professor Freeman holds the Herbert Ascherman Chair of Economics at Harvard University and received the Mincer Lifetime Achievement Prize from the Society of Labor Economists in 2006. In 2007 he was awarded the IZA Prize in Labor Economics and in 2011 he was appointed Frances Perkins Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Page 4 - Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research

Investor Confidence Recovering — Unfazed by Federal Election A surprise upturn in confidence has arrested the decline of negative sentiment among Australian investors, according to the August issue of the Global Proxy – Melbourne Institute Shareholder Confidence IndexTM. Key findings from the latest report include: • the Confidence Index fell by only a fraction compared with last quarter’s 10.5 per cent drop, as investors see a brighter future; • expected confidence improved ignoring the federal election outcome on 7 September; and • insider trading by institutions was a concern to more than half the nation’s retail investors.

While investor confidence has eased slightly since May 2013, investors are looking more confidently to the future with the majority not awaiting the outcome of the federal election on 7 September to make investment decisions.

campaigning. These latest findings also reveal that most of Australia’s retail investors have concerns about insider trading by institutions and that they have a poor understanding of High Frequency Trading through Dark Pools, in which large blocks of shares are traded without revealing prices.

The latest Global Proxy – Melbourne Institute Shareholder Confidence Index fell by only 0.3 per cent in August 2013 compared with 10.5 per cent in May 2013, while the Current Confidence Index fell 4.3 per cent in August following a fall of 6.7 per cent in May. This indicates that confidence in the market appears to be stabilising with the negative effects associated with current conditions offset by more favourable views about future prospects. The Expected Confidence Index improved by 3.9 per cent reversing the fall of 14.4 per cent in May. Although the market is still weak, there are signs of renewed interest in shares associated with ‘consumer discretionary’, ‘energy’ and ‘financials’.

The Shareholder Confidence Index is a leading indicator The report is available from <www.melbourneinstitute.com/ of where share prices are heading and the latest miaesr/publications/indicators/global-proxy.html>. findings were polled during the second week of election Buying Intentions: Types of Shares Current Intentions May 2013 Current Intentions August 2013 Consumer discretionary

Consumer discretionary

Energy

Energy

Financials

Financials

Health

Health

Industrials

Industrials

May

Information technology Materials

August

Information technology

February

Metals and minerals

May

Materials Metals and minerals

Consumer staples

Consumer staples

Telecommunications

Telecommunications

Utilities

Utilities

None of the above

None of the above 0

2

4

6

8 %

10

12

14

16

0

2

4

6

8 %

10

12

14

16

Vale Emeritus Professor Helen Hughes AO 1928–2013 Professor Helen Hughes AO was Professor Emeritus at the Australian National University (ANU) and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. Her expertise covered a range of areas including the Australian economy, economic development and aid, international trade, Indigenous affairs and capital flows.

She was Professor of Economics and Director of the National Centre for Development Studies at ANU from 1983 to 1993, and a member of the FitzGerald Committee on Immigration: A Commitment to Australia. She also worked at the World Bank from 1968 to 1983 and was a member of the United Nations Committee for Development Planning from 1987 to 1993.

From 1994 to 1995 Professor Hughes was a Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Institute and Director of the Employment Project — a joint initiative of the Melbourne Institute and the Institute of Public Affairs. Widely published on a range of topics and regularly interviewed in the media, Professor Hughes recently focused on issues of development in the Pacific and Australia’s remote Indigenous communities.

Page 5 - Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research

Melbourne Institute Policy Briefs Series The Melbourne Institute has recently released three reports in its Policy Briefs series that have received significant media focus and highlighted the ‘voice’ of the Melbourne Institute on pertinent policy issues.

These Policy Briefs interrogated public policy responses, placed a spotlight on health expenditure and questioned Australia’s economic policies.

Private Health Insurance Rebate “Expensive and Fiscally Unsustainable”

evaluating public policy in Australia. The Policy Brief ‘What Is Evidence-Based Policy?’ by Professor Paul Jensen analyses the methods and techniques that Australian officials use to evaluate the success of policy responses.

Professor Jensen said the recent federal election provided a perfect backdrop for a serious dissection of how policies are created. The report finds there is no “silver bullet” in policy evaluation, and notes public servants are often divided on the best methods of assessment.

The federal government could save hundreds of millions of dollars each year without affecting patient outcomes by reducing the private health insurance rebate. Melbourne Institute health economist Dr Terence Cheng argues that the current 30 per cent means-tested rebate is “expensive and fiscally unsustainable”.

Using expenditure data from 2007–08, Dr Cheng’s Policy Brief ‘Does Reducing Rebates for Private Health Insurance Generate Cost Savings?’ suggests a 10 per cent reduction in the rebate would save taxpayers $215 million per year. This is because the direct savings from reducing the subsidy ($359 million) would be higher than the subsequently required increase in government spending on public hospitals ($144 million). On the whole, savings from reducing spending on rebates outweigh the predicted increase in public hospital costs by a factor of roughly 2.5.

Dr Cheng said Australians are generally supportive of Australia’s mixed public–private health care model. “But given Australians value having the choice of private care, it is reasonable that they pay for it,” he said. “The issue here is why the government should subsidise individuals to buy private health insurance.” Dr Cheng said any reduction in the rebate should be gradual, so public hospitals have time to prepare for the higher demand.

Most methods of policy assessment face ethical hurdles or statistical complications, the report warns, and policy appraisals undertaken in one part of the world are not always applicable to Australia.

The research identifies four ways to improve policy formulation in Australia and despite the inherent flaws in all of the available policy evaluation methods, Professor Jensen maintains, they are still better than the alternative — blind doctrine.

“The ultimate objective of ‘evidence-based’ policy is to use actual evidence on what works — rather than relying on simple ideology,” he said. “Only this way will good policies survive as bad policies are killed off.”

Budget Deficits Essential, But Australia’s Economic Policies Confused

Looking for the Silver Bullet in Public Policy

Australia’s existing economic policy settings and our politicians’ obsession with returning the country to surplus are sending mixed signals, the recent Policy Brief ‘Budget Deficits, Business Cycles and Macroeconomic Policies’ has found.

Greater effort must be put into differentiating highquality evidence from substandard evidence when

The authors of the Brief (Professor Guay Lim, Dr Edda Claus, Dr Viet Nguyen and Dr Michael Chua) argue that

Page 6 - Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research

budget deficits are also a natural outcome of business cycles and act as fiscal stabilisers that counter the effects associated with downturns such as job losses and a fall in gross domestic product (GDP).

The research highlights that Australia has one of the lowest gross debt to GDP ratios in the world (33 per cent), compared to other developed economies such as the United Kingdom (104 per cent), United States (106 per cent) and Greece (166 per cent).

“It has been five years since the onset of the GFC [global financial crisis] and Australia’s budget is still in deficit but there is an unnecessary fixation with achieving a budget surplus,” explained Professor Lim.

Australia’s fiscal balance to return to surplus. The study questions whether the Reserve Bank of Australia’s monetary policy (cutting interest rates) and the government’s tight fiscal policy (to decrease the deficit) can operate in unison.

The report notes that both levers of Australian economic policy are working in opposite directions, with tight fiscal policy versus loose monetary policy. To use the analogy of a car — one foot is on the accelerator while the other foot is on the brake. The outcome for the economy, as in a car, is that both actions cancel each other and the longer this is done, the greater the likelihood of damage.

“In an economic environment of low growth, budget deficits play a valuable role in alleviating the hardships of economic downturns.”

The analysis charts Australian government spending over 10 years and found it took five years after the 1980s recession and seven years after the 1990s recession for

The Melbourne Institute Policy Briefs Series is available from <www.melbourneinstitute.com/ miaesr/publications/policy-briefsseries/pbs2013.html>. A list of recent Policy Briefs is published on the last page of this newsletter.

Education, Social Background and Cognitive Ability: New Book Released Are socioeconomic inequalities in education declining? Is socioeconomic background becoming less important for people’s occupational class or status? How important is cognitive ability for education and later occupational outcomes? How do countries differ in the importance of socioeconomic background for education and work?

Dr Gary Marks (Principal Research Fellow at the Melbourne Institute) argues that in western industrialised countries, pervasive views that socioeconomic background (or class background) has strong and unchanging relationships with education and later socioeconomic outcomes, resistant to policy and social change, are unfounded. Dr Marks provides a large amount of evidence from many countries showing that the influence of socioeconomic background (including family income and wealth) on education is moderate and most often declining, and that socioeconomic background has only very weak impacts on adults’ occupation and earnings after taking into account education and cognitive ability.

Furthermore, Dr Marks shows that cognitive ability is a more powerful influence than socioeconomic background for educational outcomes, and that in addition to its indirect effects through education has direct effects on occupation and earnings. Its effects cannot be dismissed as simply another aspect of socioeconomic background, nor do the usual criticisms of ‘cognitive ability’ apply. The declining effects on socioeconomic background and the importance of cognitive ability support several of the contentions of modernisation theory.

The book contributes to a variety of debates within sociology: quantitative and qualitative approaches, explanatory and non-explanatory theory, the relationship between theory and empirical research, the role of political ideology in research, sociology as a social science, and sociology’s contribution to knowledge about contemporary societies. It will appeal to professionals in the fields of education, economics, psychology and sociology as well as postgraduate students and academics involved in the debate.

This new publication can be purchased online at <www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415842464/>.

Page 7 - Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research

Recent Melbourne Institute Working Papers 22/13 ‘Right Peer, Right Now? Endogenous Peer Effects and Achievement in Victorian Primary Schools’ Duncan McVicar, Julie Moschion and Chris Ryan 23/13 ‘Competition, Prices and Quality in the Market for Physician Consultations’ Hugh Gravelle, Anthony Scott, Peter Sivey and Jongsay Yong 24/13 ‘Measuring Top Incomes Using Tax Record Data: A Cautionary Tale from Australia’ Richard V. Burkhauser, Markus H. Hahn and Roger Wilkins 25/13 ‘Empirical Studies of Trade Marks: The Existing Economic Literature’ Philipp Schautschick and Christine Greenhalgh 26/13 ‘Evaluating the Evidence on Income Inequality in Australia in the 2000s’ Roger Wilkins 27/13 ‘Educational Achievement and the Allocation of School Resources’ Deborah A. Cobb-Clark and Nikhil Jha 28/13 ‘Market Forces Shaping Human Capital in Eighteenth Century London’ Moshe Justman and Karine van der Beek 29/13 ‘Non-Standard ‘Contingent’ Employment and Job Satisfaction: A Panel Data Analysis’ Hielke Buddelmeyer, Duncan McVicar and Mark Wooden 30/13 ‘Vision Versus Prudence: Government Debt Financing of Investment’ John Freebairn and Max Corden

Recent Melbourne Institute Policy Briefs 3/13 4/13 5/13 6/13

‘Does Reducing Rebates for Private Health Insurance Generate Cost Savings?’ Terence C. Cheng ‘What Is Evidence-Based Policy?’ Paul H. Jensen ‘Budget Deficits, Business Cycles and Macroeconomic Policies’ G. C. Lim, E. Claus, V. Nguyen and M. Chua ‘Have Trademarks Become Deceptive?’ Christine Greenhalgh and Elizabeth Webster

Working Papers and Policy Briefs can be downloaded for free from <www.melbourneinstitute.com/miaesr/publications/default.html>. If you would like to receive an email notification when new issues become available, contact the Melbourne Institute at <melb-inst@unimelb.edu.au>.

HILDA Survey Research Conference in October For over a decade the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey has been powering economic and social insights for academics and policy makers.

An independent review of academic research found that the HILDA survey specifically impacted tax changes proposed by the Henry Review, the government’s 2011 Paid Parental Leave policy, federal minimum wage decisions and helping to inform monetary policy settings.

In October 2013 a dedicated conference hosted by the Melbourne Institute to provide a forum for the discussion of research based on the HILDA Survey will occur at the Melbourne Institute. Attendance at the conference is open to all, but should be of special interest to users of the HILDA Survey data and persons with an interest in the outcomes from longitudinal survey research in the broad field of economic and social policy.

When: Thursday 3 to Friday 4 October 2013 Where: Business and Economics Building, 111 Barry Street and The Spot Building, 198 Berkeley Street, Carlton Registration: Standard rate $290 More details or to register: <www.melbourneinstitute.com> or <melb-conf@unimelb.edu.au>

Melbourne Institute News Views expressed by the contributors to Melbourne Institute News are not necessarily endorsed or approved by the Melbourne Institute. Neither the Melbourne Institute nor the Editor of Melbourne Institute News accepts any responsibility for the content or accuracy of information contained in this publication. Editor: Rachel Derham tel: (03) 8344 2158, fax: (03) 8344 2111, email: r.derham@unimelb.edu.au. Sub-Editor: Nellie Lentini.

Contributors: Dr Terence Cheng, James Davis, Rachel Derham, Eoin Hahessy, Professor Paul Jensen, Professor Guay Lim, Dr Gary Marks, Dr Rosanna Scutella, Dr Diana Warren, Associate Professor Roger Wilkins. Photos: stock images from <www.istockphoto.com>.

Level 5, Faculty of Business and Economics Building, The University of Melbourne T: +61 3 8344 2100 F: +61 3 8344 2111 www.melbourneinstitute.com