Ciara Smyth, Margot Rawsthorne and Peter Siminski describe the labour market transition experiences of Australian mothers who are balancing work and family responsibilities. The study reveals the contextual, fluid and complex nature of the life and work decisions that women who are parents make over the life course.

Peter Saunders, Kelly Sutherland and co-authors report on the first stage of a project designed to develop new indicators of disadvantage for Australia in the new millennium. This stage of their project involved a series of focus group discussions with clients of selected welfare programs that were designed to investigate, in detail, how people experience...

The idea that unemployment is the principal cause of poverty among those of workforce age has been a central finding of poverty research. Peter Saunders examines the links that exist between employment, unemployment, joblessness and poverty against the background of the growing diversity of labour market trends.

This report is the third in a series undertaken by the UNSW Evaluation Consortium for the Cabinet Office as part of the evaluation of Families First. It presents the findings of the Area Review in Illawarra as a regional locality in moderate need in the early stages of Families First rollout. In the first 12...

Despite its policy significance, the impact of disability has not featured prominently in the Australian empirical literature on household incomes and living standards. Peter Saunders examines how disability is associated with standard of living and its determinants (including labour force participation and the receipt of state transfers) using a range of available data, and reflects...