Back to the Future is the eighth report in the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre’s Focus on Western Australia series. Using the latest data available, this report examines recent changes in the state’s economic trends following the tailing off of the resources boom. It identifies the implications of these trends for the wellbeing of West Australian...

Policy-makers have long understood the relationship between housing and the economy through the multiplier effects of housing investment on national income and employment. There has, in contrast, been little regard to the longer term productivity and growth impacts of housing. Housing advocates and policy-makers usually focus on the social dimensions of housing. This scoping study...

This report examines the supply of subsidised affordable housing via the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) in Australia and the international approaches of the Low Income Housing Taxation Credit (LIHTC) scheme in the US and the Affordable Rents program in England.

Over the last 25 years, home ownership rates have fallen sharply for young Australians. Between 1982 and 2011, the home ownership rate for young adults aged 25 to 34 years dropped from 56% to 34%. Growing concerns about their home ownership prospects have prompted those in Generation Y (defined as 18-35 years for the purposes...

This report shows that measures of severe housing stress have increased more for renters in WA than the rest of Australia. While most key workers have seen an increase, from 2013 to 2015, in the number of suburbs in which they can rent an affordable dwelling, the same cannot be said for those on the...