This paper contains a comparison of high school completion rates across Australian states and territories from 1989 to 2002. Because the 'official' statistics contain a number of flaws, Chris Ryan and Louise Watson have produced adjusted figures which show that the peak in school retention rates in the early 1990s was less pronounced and the...

It is widely held that imperfect capital markets mean that individuals from poor backgrounds cannot borrow to finance educational investments. But are these credit constraints an empirical reality? The 1995 Canadian Out of Employment Panel is used to take a new approach to this question by exploring the financial resources and skill formation choices of...

In this paper the authors investigate if there was a causal effect of changes in current and 'permanent' income on the health of East Germans in the years following reunification. Reunification was completely unanticipated and therefore can be seen as providing some exogenous variation, which resulted in a substantial increase in average household incomes for...

The aim of this paper is to explain why time use data are essential for analyzing issues of gender equity and the intra-household allocation of resources, for comparing living standards and for estimating the behavioural effects of changes in policy variables.

The authors describe Australia's Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS), and analyse its impact on the social composition of university participation before and after the introduction of HECS. Their findings suggest that income contingent charging systems for higher education have the potential to protect the access of the disadvantaged.