Rising cost-of-living pressures continue to strain household budgets across Australia and policymakers require timely and reliable measures of financial hardship. This paper introduces a new high-frequency indicator of financial stress derived from failed direct debit payments in bank transaction data. This indicator could offer policymakers an early warning indicator of financial stress and inform targeted...

This report follows the trajectories of workers of different occupations, ages, and locations to better understand how wages and housing costs vary between the cities and regions. It also identifies the migration flows within Australia occurring in response to changing locations of opportunity finding overseas immigration has offset the worker exodus from the cities

Does new housing provided by the private market increase the availability of affordable housing? Or should government policy subsidise housing and directly target low-income households to increase affordability? The answer depends on how quickly housing becomes more affordable as it ages and this is explored in this paper.

This research note quantifies the effect of stamp duty on the number of housing purchases in Australia and people moving homes.

Stamp duty penalises homeowners that move. This note – the first in a two part series – illustrates its costs on people using data from the 2023 McKinnon Poll 'Understanding attitudes towards housing in Australia'.