Living Decently Material Well-being in Australia

by Travers, Peter; Richardson, Susan

• ISBN13: 9780195533606
• ISBN10: 0195533607
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-02-24
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Living Decently describes material well-being in Australia at the end ofthe 1980s, and, in doing so, reaches conclusions that are surprisingly positive.Material affluence was at an all-time high. Although Australia was not theworld leader in equality, it still ranked around the middle of the dozen mostequal countries in the world. Australia is a world leader when it comes tosocial mobility: advantage and disadvantage are not always passed on from onegeneration to the next. Where disadvantage does exist, it is often compensatedfor by advantages in other aspects of life. Thus, the aged in Australiagenerally have low incomes, but they enjoy extremely high rates of homeownership. In the late 1980s, Australians were indeed 'living decently'.Unpersuaded by the 'gloom and doom' accounts of life in Australia that abound,and particularly sceptical of accounts of ever-increasing poverty, even in timesof economic prosperity, the authors examined the measures used in these accountsand concluded that they make it difficult to reach any conclusion other than agloomy one. Accordingly, they have designed better measures of a more accurateand rather more encouraging picture of how Australians were living at the end ofthe 1980s.It is argued, however, that this rosy picture may not last. It was built on lowlevels of unemployent, high rates of home ownership, and 'good enough' socialsecurity, health and education systems. All these features are under threat inthe 1990s. The book goes on to make recommendations on how Australians mightlive as decently in the future as they have in the past.Living Decently is a challenging and timely offering to the literature onmaterial well-being, poverty, welfare and social economics in Australia today.Its findings are cause for cautious optimism and provide a direction for futureaction.