tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/hilda-2018-57237/articleshilda 2018 – The Conversation2018-08-09T20:12:15Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1008182018-08-09T20:12:15Z2018-08-09T20:12:15ZInteractive: how have your family’s fortunes changed? Use this drag-and-drop tool to find out<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231016/original/file-20180808-191013-la3sza.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Do you feel that, overall, you’re “better off” than you were in the past? Or that things are getting worse, or have plateaued?</p>
<p>We now have the data to get us a pretty good answer to that question, right down to the detail by “family types”, as categorised by the <a href="https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/hilda/publications/hilda-statistical-reports">Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey</a>. Starting in 2001, this longitudinal survey now tracks more than 17,500 people in 9,500 households.</p>
<p>The interactive below lets you drag and drop your family members into the house to see what the HILDA data reveal.</p>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-288" class="tc-infographic" height="1400" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/288/d37d6b2e4bd124d29f741dd4bf99ca8f4e8bd69e/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/politicians-stop-pitching-to-the-average-australian-being-middle-class-depends-on-where-you-live-88470">Politicians, stop pitching to the 'average' Australian; being middle class depends on where you live</a>
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<p>One measure we’re showing is what economists call “<a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/A390E2529EC00DFECA25720A0076F6C6?opendocument">equivalised income</a>”. That’s different to your total household income; here’s how the HILDA report explains it:</p>
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<p>Overall, median equivalised incomes have gone up since 2001 for all family types, but some have fared better than others, as this chart from the full HILDA report shows:</p>
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<p>For the purposes of interpreting the HILDA data, you might need to be a bit flexible when deciding which “family type” applies to you. For example, a household with two single, adult sisters living together will be classified as two single-person “families”, even though they might see themselves as a family unit.</p>
<p>And it’s worth remembering, as the HILDA report <a href="https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/2839919/2018-HILDA-SR-for-web.pdf">notes</a>:</p>
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<p>… some households will contain multiple “families”. For example, a household containing a non-elderly couple living with a non-dependent son will contain a non-elderly couple family and a non-elderly single male. Both of these families will, of course, have the same household equivalised income. Also note that, to be classified as having dependent children, the children must live with the parent or guardian at least 50% of the time. Consequently, individuals with dependent children who reside with them less than 50% of the time will not be classified as having resident dependent children.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/trust-me-im-an-expert-what-the-huge-hilda-survey-reveals-about-your-economic-well-being-health-and-family-life-100751">Trust Me, I'm An Expert: what the huge HILDA survey reveals about your economic well-being, health and family life</a>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hilda-survey-reveals-striking-gender-and-age-divide-in-financial-literacy-test-yourself-with-this-quiz-100451">HILDA Survey reveals striking gender and age divide in financial literacy. Test yourself with this quiz</a>
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Use our drag-and-drop interactive to find out how incomes, financial wellbeing, and housing stress has changed since 2001 for various ‘family types’, including singles or couples without children.Sunanda Creagh, Senior EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1008832018-08-05T20:12:44Z2018-08-05T20:12:44ZSorry, men, there’s no such thing as ‘dirt blindness’ – you just need to do more housework<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230496/original/file-20180802-41357-11l0m9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">While the gender gap is narrowing, women still do seven hours more housework per week than men (and that doesn't include the child-caring).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The problem with housework is that it is never-ending drudgery. As soon as the floor is cleaned, the dog throws up, the kids spill slime ingredients into the wood grain, and the tradie walks through the house with well-oiled work boots. And the cycle begins again.</p>
<p>The Danish use the word <em>hygge</em> to describe the feeling of cosiness, warmth, and comfort that a well-kept house is supposed to provide. Yet creating this pleasant environment requires work and, unfortunately, the bulk of that work is done by women. </p>
<p>Findings from the latest <a href="https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/who-is-doing-what-on-the-homefront">Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia</a> (HILDA) report show that Australian men have increased their housework time by 55 minutes and women have reduced theirs by two-and-a-half hours per week. So the gender gap in housework is narrowing.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-last-nights-fight-affects-the-way-couples-divide-housework-92582">How last night's fight affects the way couples divide housework</a>
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<p>Yet women still do seven hours more housework per week than men. Do women just have a love of cleaning that men do not share? Or are men “dirt-blind” – unable to see the mess as it emerges and takes over the sofa?</p>
<p>Fortunately for humankind, the answer to both of these questions is no. Below, we unpack some of the main reasons why women’s housework share remains larger than men’s, and offer solutions to tidy up this gendered mess.</p>
<h2>Men and ‘dirt blindness’ is a furphy</h2>
<p>While attitudes towards gender roles have <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12546-010-9039-9">become less traditional</a>, there are still gendered expectations about cleanliness of the home and children.</p>
<p>Any dirt, mess or failure to provide clean, immaculately dressed and polite children to the world is most often a judgement against women – a sure sign of bad mothering. Inherent in this assumption is the idea that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqQgDwA0BNU">men don’t see mess</a>, or are oblivious to the <a href="https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/">cleaning and mental work</a> associated with ensuring that the household runs properly.</p>
<p>Even when housework is outsourced, women are more often responsible for organising and paying the cleaner, or hitting the button on the full dishwasher or robot vacuum.</p>
<p>What’s more, the types of domestic work that are outsourced is <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-014-0833-1">usually the work</a> often done by men, such as gardening or household maintenance. So the benefit of domestic outsourcing is usually <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/why-outsourcing-doesnt-make-chores-fairer-for-women-20160805-gqlx6m.html">marginal for women</a>. </p>
<p>Because of men’s lack of desire to twirl a brush around the toilet bowl, or their general lack of concern about having a clean house, we tend to think of them as being “dirt-blind”. But really it’s because men aren’t penalised for messiness in the same way that women are.</p>
<p>For women, cleanliness in the family home is a further extension of prevailing social norms dictating that women must be clean, hairless, perfumed and pretty. In this regard, doing housework is a way for women to “perform” their gender.</p>
<p>Men not doing housework also fits with long-held ideas about men and dirt that begin with boys and the outdoors. Thus, keeping house is as much about gendered expectations as it is about actual dirt. Men do see dirt, but they aren’t told from a young age that leaving a mess makes them bad men. </p>
<h2>Women’s resources are discounted</h2>
<p>In 2017, Australian women <a href="https://www.oecd.org/australia/Gender2017-AUS-en.pdf">earned</a> 87 cents for every dollar earned by a man. The <a href="https://www.wgea.gov.au/addressing-pay-equity/what-gender-pay-gap">gender pay gap</a> in Australia has hovered between 15% and 19% for the past two decades.</p>
<p>Mothers, regardless of their profession, earn less than fathers, indicating that <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00597.x">gender discrimination</a>, rather than competence or occupational type, explains these gaps. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/trust-me-im-an-expert-what-the-huge-hilda-survey-reveals-about-your-economic-well-being-health-and-family-life-100751">Trust Me, I'm An Expert: what the huge HILDA survey reveals about your economic well-being, health and family life</a>
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<p>The gap in earnings is important, as having more money gives women more power – including to outsource housework. Studies show that <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2010.00818.x">women are more likely than men</a> to use their earnings to outsource housework. Women who are equal earners to men report the most equal housework divisions.</p>
<p>Yet when women start to earn more than their husbands, their earnings are less effective than men’s in getting their husbands to increase their housework share. Housework scholarship has long documented that women who earn more than their male partners spend <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/230577">more, not less, time in housework</a> than women whose earnings equal men’s.</p>
<p>In other words, as women’s earnings exceed men’s, these earnings become a less valuable bargaining tool within a relationship. A <a href="https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2018/demo/SEHSD-WP2018-20.pdf">recent study from the US census</a> shows that women who earn more than their partners under-report their own and overstate their husbands’ earnings.</p>
<p>So arguments that women can use their higher earnings to negotiate for husbands’ greater housework contributions do not hold true.</p>
<h2>Closing the gap in housework</h2>
<p><a href="https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/who-is-doing-what-on-the-homefront">A recent study</a> about housework posed a dire warning: at the current pace, it will take 30 years for the gender gap in housework to close. This is unlikely to eventuate unless we dramatically rethink the way men and women organise their work and family lives in Australia.</p>
<p>But there are a few ways forward. First, governments can provide help in the form of subsidies to hire cleaners or buy prepared meals to help families reduce their housework burden.</p>
<p>The Swedes have <a href="https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/data/tackling-undeclared-work-in-europe/database/tax-deductions-for-domestic-service-work-sweden">instituted a tax credit</a> for housework to help reduce the family’s load and to bring this type of black-market labour into the light. </p>
<p>The second is for women to reduce their housework to similar levels as men. Based on current estimates, this means women will contribute 55 minutes per week. We could call this a housework strike – a way to draw attention to the unseen housework that women do and to encourage men’s equal contribution. This will require women to become “dirt blind” and hold out until a crisis point is reached, such as everyone in the house running out of clean underwear. </p>
<p>However, women still do more childcare than men, so this won’t solve all of women’s domestic woes. The final solution is for men to see housework for what it is – drudgery that we all have to do in order to achieve <em>hygge</em>. Men have heeded the call to increase their time with children – now a housework revolution is necessary for us all to relax.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100883/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leah Ruppanner receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brendan Churchill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New data show that while the gender gap on housework is narrowing, women still carry the load.Leah Ruppanner, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, The University of MelbourneBrendan Churchill, Research Fellow in Sociology, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1008322018-07-31T07:16:05Z2018-07-31T07:16:05ZVIDEO: 10 notable trends from the new HILDA survey<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229953/original/file-20180731-136649-11xxxyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
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<p>Australia is changing, and some emerging trends may surprise you. </p>
<p>The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey tells the stories of the same group of Australians over the course of their lives. Starting in 2001, the survey now tracks more than 17,500 people in 9500 households. </p>
<p>So what’s this year’s report show? Here are 10 trends worth noting.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/trust-me-im-an-expert-what-the-huge-hilda-survey-reveals-about-your-economic-well-being-health-and-family-life-100751">Trust Me, I'm An Expert: what the huge HILDA survey reveals about your economic well-being, health and family life</a>
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<li><p>Household spending on energy has fallen since 2014, even as power prices rose. Maybe we’re using less power to cope with higher prices.</p></li>
<li><p>Compared to the past, more young people now don’t have a driver’s license, or delay getting one til their late 20s. And 74.6% of men born in the 1920s still held a driver’s licence in 2016.</p></li>
<li><p>The survey also looked at what factors might protect against cognitive decline as we age. Turns out brain exercises probably help - but not as much as you may think. The extent of decline over four years in one measure of cognitive ability was slightly smaller for those who regularly do puzzles, and slightly worse for those who regularly write.</p></li>
<li><p>Despite what you hear about small business being the engine of the economy, the share of people who describe themselves as “self-employed” has fallen for over 16 years. And these people are not employing as many workers as they once did. The data didn’t show strong growth in the gig economy either.</p></li>
<li><p>Our views about marriage and sharing housework are getting more progressive. But women are still shouldering much more housework and childcare than men, even as more women are working.</p></li>
<li><p>Single parent women and elderly single women are more likely to experience poverty than their male counterparts.</p></li>
<li><p>As wage growth has slowed, household incomes have stagnated. Growth in household disposable income started to weaken in 2009, as the GFC took hold.</p></li>
<li><p>Home ownership has declined, more of us are renting and intergenerational inequality has grown.</p></li>
<li><p>There is a clear gender divide in financial literacy: when asked a set of financial literacy questions, 49.9% of men answered all five correctly, compared with 35.4% of women.</p></li>
<li><p>Australians, especially women, are much more likely to hold post-school qualifications than in the past.</p></li>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hilda-survey-reveals-striking-gender-and-age-divide-in-financial-literacy-test-yourself-with-this-quiz-100451">HILDA Survey reveals striking gender and age divide in financial literacy. Test yourself with this quiz</a>
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Here are 10 trends worth noting from this year’s huge Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. For starters, household spending on energy fell, even as power prices rose.Sunanda Creagh, Senior EditorWes Mountain, Social Media + Visual Storytelling EditorJerwin De Guzman, Multimedia InternLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1007512018-07-30T19:52:25Z2018-07-30T19:52:25ZTrust Me, I’m An Expert: what the huge HILDA survey reveals about your economic well-being, health and family life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229744/original/file-20180730-106502-15n7m3i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The enormous Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey tells the stories of the same group of Australians over the course of their lives.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mavis Wong/The Conversation NY-BD-CC</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On today’s episode of the podcast, we’re talking about what one of Australia’s biggest longitudinal surveys and richest data sets, <a href="https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/hilda/publications/hilda-statistical-reports">released today</a>, says about how the nation is changing. And some of the trends may surprise you. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/hilda/publications/hilda-statistical-reports">Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey</a> tells the stories of the same group of Australians over the course of their lives. Starting in 2001, the survey now tracks more than 17,500 people in 9,500 households, asking about their economic well-being, health and family life. </p>
<p>So what does this year’s report tell us about the country Australia has become? </p>
<p>Here to break it all down for us today is Roger Wilkins from the University of Melbourne, lead author of the report.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hilda-survey-reveals-striking-gender-and-age-divide-in-financial-literacy-test-yourself-with-this-quiz-100451">HILDA Survey reveals striking gender and age divide in financial literacy. Test yourself with this quiz</a>
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<p>Wilkins said he was surprised by what this huge survey showed about Australians’ financial literacy, our energy use, how many of us are putting off getting a driver’s licence, how our economy is changing, and how our attitudes toward marriage and family life are shifting. </p>
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<p>The report reveals some insights into where we perhaps need to concentrate our public policy efforts to boost Australia’s economic well-being.</p>
<p>What does it all mean for you and me? Listening to Roger Wilkins explain it all may just inspire you to rethink your own financial future.</p>
<p>Roger Wilkins spoke to The Conversation’s deputy politics and society editor Justin Bergman. We’ve included an edited transcript below.</p>
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<h2>What is HILDA and why does it matter?</h2>
<p><strong>Justin Bergman:</strong> Roger, in a nutshell I’d love to start out by just hearing what the HILDA survey is and why this matters to people. </p>
<p><strong>Roger Wilkins:</strong> The HILDA survey is Australia’s nationally representative longitudinal study of Australians. It started in 2001 and it’s a bit like the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) cross-sectional surveys we’re familiar with, where we get information on people’s employment, their family life, their incomes, their health and well-being. But what distinguishes HILDA is that we’re following the same people year in, year out.</p>
<p>So we are getting a moving picture of people’s lives rather than the cross-sectional snapshot or photograph that the ABS surveys give us. So that’s really what’s unique about HILDA.</p>
<p>We’re now entering our 18th year. So we’re getting a really rich picture of how people’s lives evolve over time, and it allows us to answer all sorts of questions that we couldn’t do with cross-sectional data. </p>
<p>Things like: if someone is poor in one year, how likely are they to be poor the next year? You can’t answer that with cross-sectional data but with our data you can see how long, whether it’s the same people who are poor year in, year out, or whether it tends to be a temporary affair. </p>
<p>And moreover, you can look at: well, who are the people who managed to get themselves out of poverty? And who are the people who don’t? </p>
<p>This gives us incredibly useful information for policymakers about who are the people who are persistently struggling, for example, and therefore we should be thinking more about from a policy perspective. And that’s just one example of many in terms of the value of the HILDA Survey. </p>
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<h2>Energy spending is falling</h2>
<p><strong>Justin Bergman:</strong> I realise it’s probably a great deal of data to pore through and lots of interesting findings we’re going to get into in this podcast. Were there any that you found particularly surprising or interesting, just off the top? </p>
<p><strong>Roger Wilkins:</strong> Well, we have been tracking people’s household expenditure since 2005 and that includes their expenditure on home energy. Things like electricity and gas. So, we thought, well, there’s been a lot of attention recently to rising prices for electricity and gas. So we thought, well let’s have a look at what’s been happening to household expenditure. That’s different to the price because your expenditure depends on not only the price but how much of the energy you use. </p>
<p>And one thing that surprised me was that the HILDA data is showing that people’s expenditure actually peaked in around 2014. So since then people have actually been <em>decreasing</em> their expenditure, in real terms at least, adjusting for inflation. </p>
<p>So that was something that I wasn’t expecting because there’s been a lot of recent media about prices continuing to rise since 2014 and yet expenditure hasn’t been rising since 2014.</p>
<p>What it seems is that people are have been adapting to these higher prices and doing things like buying energy-efficient appliances, insulating their homes, installing solar panels, perhaps heating fewer rooms in the house in winter. That sort of thing seems to have been going on. </p>
<p>So, as I said, the total expenditure on home energy has actually declined slightly since 2014. </p>
<h2>Cognitive ability and decline</h2>
<p><strong>Justin Bergman:</strong> Great. And one of the interesting chapters that we thought was quite surprising was the one about measuring cognitive ability. And I wanted to ask you, starting off, what are the factors that you looked at in this chapter, when it comes to what contributes to cognitive decline?</p>
<p><strong>Roger Wilkins:</strong> Yes, so we have now in two years - in 2012 and 2016 - administered these tests which are called “cognitive ability tasks”. They ask the respondents to perform various activities which allow us to produce measures of their cognitive functioning or their cognitive ability.</p>
<p>And because we have, as I said before, we’re following the same people year in, year out, we can actually look at how these measures of cognitive ability changed between 2012 and 2016. </p>
<p>And we do indeed find that, particularly at the older end of the age spectrum, that there is considerable cognitive decline; that people’s performance on these tests does decline, particularly once you sort of get over the age of 70 - 75. That’s when we really start to see that decline becoming quite sizeable. </p>
<p>So one of the things that we did in this year’s report is looked at whether there were things other than age that were predictive of cognitive decline. And we were particularly interested in whether there were various cognitive activities or other activities that you might engage in that could protect against cognitive decline. </p>
<p>So we looked at things like how often you do puzzles, things like crosswords, how often you read, how often you write, whether you use a computer regularly, whether you do any volunteering, whether you are actually doing any paid employment, how often you look after grandchildren. These sorts of activities, the basis that perhaps the more stimulated you are cognitively, the less decline you’d experience.</p>
<p>And the overriding result we found is that very little seems to protect against cognitive decline. We find some evidence in favour of doing puzzles regularly, things like crosswords, where on one of the measures of cognitive ability it did seem to reduce the extent of decline.</p>
<p>But broadly speaking, most of these cognitive activities didn’t seem to impact on the extent of decline. </p>
<p><strong>Justin Bergman:</strong> But doing puzzles was one that you saw that did have an impact. Any idea why that might have been?</p>
<p><strong>Roger Wilkins:</strong> Well, I mean, the logic is that it’s sort of the “use it or lose it” argument; that if you’re using your brain, in the same way as if you were exercising a muscle, it keeps it in better condition. That’s sort of the logic. But for some reason we don’t, for example, find that with writing regularly. </p>
<p>That probably is suggestive that doing your crosswords or Sudoku or the like is perhaps not a bad idea, particularly if you enjoy doing them, because it might be having this beneficial side effect. </p>
<p>We also looked at perhaps what you think of as behaviours that might be adverse to cognitive functioning. So, in particular, things like smoking and drinking. And there is some evidence that heavy consumption of alcohol does accelerate cognitive decline but we don’t find any effects of smoking.</p>
<p><strong>Justin Bergman:</strong> Very interesting. So do your puzzles and try to avoid alcohol as much as possible.</p>
<p><strong>Roger Wilkins:</strong> Sounds like common sense, doesn’t it?</p>
<h2>More young people are delaying getting a driver’s license</h2>
<p><strong>Justin Bergman:</strong> So, going to the chapter about people driving in Australia, what did you notice about the data on driver’s licences?</p>
<p><strong>Roger Wilkins:</strong> Yes, well, I mean, people would not be surprised to learn that most people do have a driver’s licence. Although a surprising - well, for me, at least - quite a surprisingly high proportion of young people in the 18-24 range don’t have a driver’s licence. </p>
<p>So while most people — over 90% — eventually get their licence, for many of them it’s not until their late 20s or even their 30s when they do get their licence. So, for example, in the 18-19 range, over a third of people in that age range don’t have a driver’s licence.</p>
<p>And something that we see in just the four-year period between 2012 and 2016: when we asked people whether they have a driver’s licence, even over that short period, we have seen a decline in the proportion of people who have a driver’s licence in that age range.</p>
<p>So whether that’s because the requirements in order to pass the test have been tending to ramp up in most states, I’m not sure. Certainly, there obviously have always been significant costs for obtaining a licence which might be a barrier for young people but I’m not sure that, you know, the extent to which those costs have increased. For example, requiring logbooks with a certain number of hours of driving, I’m not sure exactly the timing of when those increases in requirements have occurred. </p>
<p>But certainly this data is showing an increasing proportion of young people without a licence. </p>
<h2>Many men hang on to their driver’s licence until later in life</h2>
<p><strong>Justin Bergman:</strong> Right, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, we also noticed that a large number of people in the older generations have driver’s licences. But specifically, you found 74.6% of men born in the 1920s still held a licence in 2016. So what does the data tell us about older people with driving?</p>
<p><strong>Roger Wilkins:</strong> I think certainly we see that loss of licence - whether it’s relinquished or having it cancelled - is very much concentrated amongst older people. </p>
<p>Although surprisingly, for me at least, a surprisingly high proportion of young people do seem to lose their licence over a four-year period. So, you know, at least sort of 2-3% of people in their 20s and 30s reported that they had a licence in 2012 and they didn’t in 2016. </p>
<p>The extent to which that is because they had traffic violations that resulted in suspension or cancellation, I’m not sure. We didn’t ask why they didn’t have a licence but that did surprise me. </p>
<p>Certainly, the rates of loss of licence are much higher amongst the older age groups. But, as you said, nearly three-quarters of men born in the 1920s - so they’re all, I guess, at least 86 years old in 2016 - so at least three-quarters or nearly three-quarters of men aged 86 and over still held a driver’s licence. </p>
<p>And that does certainly seem quite high and it’s certainly a lot higher than amongst women. So it does seem that men hang on to their licences a lot longer.</p>
<p>Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re driving. You can have a licence without driving but it’s probably strongly correlated with driving. So it does suggest that, you know, particularly men are able to hang on to their licence longer than or are willing to hold on to them longer than women. </p>
<h2>The share of workers who describe themselves as ‘self-employed’ is falling</h2>
<p><strong>Justin Bergman:</strong> Moving on, can you tell us a little bit about what the data showed us about self-employed workers that you found interesting or surprising in the survey?</p>
<p><strong>Roger Wilkins:</strong> Yes, certainly what is interesting is that self-employment has been declining this century. So at least the proportion of people in the labour market who describe themselves as self-employed has been declining for the last 16 plus years. And that’s especially concentrated on people who employ others, so we’re really talking here about a decline in small business. </p>
<p>And this is, I guess, rather at odds with a lot of the rhetoric we see amongst politicians about how small business is the engine of the economy and where growth in jobs comes from. And the evidence is quite to the contrary: that in fact our employment growth has really not come from small business or from self-employment. It’s really been coming from larger employers, be they medium or large businesses. </p>
<p>And I think given what we’re observing in the trends, I think that’s something that over coming years will continue. That it is probably, to my view, a bit wrong-headed to think that that stimulating employment in small business is the way to generate jobs in the community more broadly. I think the changing structure of the economy is actually moving us further away from that than towards it. </p>
<p>And in that context it’s also interesting that for all the talk about the rise of the gig economy, these are these jobs that are I guess facilitated by apps on phones and things like Uber and Deliveroo and things like that. We don’t see evidence in the data of much growth in employment of this kind. </p>
<p>So as I said, self-employment has actually been declining. You might think well, maybe many of these gig-type jobs are secondary jobs. So that while people in their main job are employed, perhaps in a second job they’re a gig worker doing some Uber driving on the side. But we haven’t seen a growth in multiple job-holding either. </p>
<p>So it seems so far that most of these gig jobs have really been about transforming jobs that already existed, so taxi drivers have always tended to be self-employed. Uber drivers are self-employed. We’ve got sort of a compositional change, a bit of a shift away from traditional taxis towards these Uber drivers.</p>
<p>It’s the same with, I guess, food delivery. Casual observation would suggest that there has been a rise in these gig-type jobs but I think it’s easy for us to overestimate how significant a phenomenon this is. </p>
<h2>On marriage and housework, our attitudes are changing faster than our behaviour</h2>
<p><strong>Justin Bergman:</strong> It is really interesting, actually. We were also quite surprised by some of the things you see in the attitudes towards marriage and family changing. And I was curious what you’re seeing in terms of attitudes in Australian society becoming more progressive on this front.</p>
<p><strong>Roger Wilkins:</strong> Well, you’ve essentially summed up what we find. For a long time now, we’ve been tracking people’s attitudes to marriage and family and to parenting and paid work. </p>
<p>This allows us to produce measures of the extent to which people have what we might call “progressive views”, which, in very loose terms, is the extent to which people are in favour of men taking a more active role in raising children and women taking a greater role in bringing in the household income, so being more engaged in the labour market. There are other dimensions to these measures of traditional views versus progressive views. But that’s probably the most important dimension and we’re certainly seeing that views are becoming considerably more progressive. There’s been quite substantial change over the course of this century.</p>
<p>What, to me, was interesting is that when you actually look then at how behaviour is changing then it seems that these changes in attitudes aren’t really translating so far into much change in how people behave.</p>
<p>This is very much connected to the arrival of children. So before children arrive, men and women have quite similar-looking division of their labour – the amount of time they spend in employment, the amount of time they spend on housework and so forth is quite similar. </p>
<p>But once the first child arrives, and this is probably not news to anyone who has had kids out there, but there’s a sharp divide that opens up between men and women. </p>
<p>Women withdraw, to a large extent, from the labour market and men, to a large extent, withdraw from the home production - if you like, from the housework and the care. </p>
<p>And what’s really interesting is how this persists. So even once the children age and move through school and even beyond, we still see this division persisting. So the arrival of the child precipitates a change, so even when the care requirements of the children diminish and so forth, we still see this divide between men and women persist. </p>
<p>So, I think there are good economic explanations for this but I also think that there are reasons, from a public policy point of view, for us to be concerned about this. </p>
<p>And really, it relates to the fact that we know probably around one in three marriages will end in divorce - maybe more, maybe a bit less going forward. That, therefore, means that women are much more vulnerable in that post-divorce world than men because they’ve put their careers on hold, their income-earning potential is considerably lower than men’s. And so therefore their economic well-being is likely to be lower than men’s post-divorce.</p>
<p>And then that has flow on effects into their retirement living standard because their superannuation contributions will be lower. So I think while it might make economic sense for men and women to specialise in this way, it is having this undesirable longer-term consequence for women’s well-being and that’s why we do see higher rates of poverty amongst single women, particularly single parent women and elderly single women, than we see for men. </p>
<p><strong>Justin Bergman:</strong> Interesting. I don’t know if you’ve tracked these data for same-sex couples as well. Have you noticed any divisions in terms of attitudes toward housework and the divide in other types of marriages?</p>
<p><strong>Roger Wilkins:</strong> No, so we haven’t looked at that this year. One of the problems in doing so is that the HILDA survey is a sample survey, so while we have 17,500 people from right across Australia, which gives us a lot of potential to produce reliable estimates on what is happening in the community, when you look at particular demographic subgroups it becomes more difficult to make reliable statements about overall trends.</p>
<p>So while same-sex couples are a significant minority in the community, they are still quite a small part of the HILDA survey sample. So it becomes a bit more difficult to be confident in estimates based on small demographic groups.</p>
<h2>Australia has its problems, but society still functions well for most</h2>
<p><strong>Justin Bergman:</strong> Just wrapping up, looking at the data as a whole, I’m curious what story you think it’s telling about how Australia’s going, how it’s changing, where it’s going at the moment?</p>
<p><strong>Roger Wilkins:</strong> Well, I mean for all its problems - and there are, of course, many - the clear picture from HILDA Survey that Australia is a well-functioning society in which most people feel able to pursue fulfilling lives, pursue their aspirations and live the life, or a form of the life, that they aspire to.</p>
<p>So while, of course, there is much to do to make our society work better, I think we risk making some big mistakes, moving forward, if we aren’t cognisant of how much is already working quite well.</p>
<p>I think that’s something that probably gets lost a bit in a lot of public discussion and media. We tend to focus on the negative and that creates, I think, an impression of much greater dysfunction in our society than is actually the case. </p>
<p>Now, you have always got to very quickly follow up such a statement with the caveat that of course there are problems and HILDA certainly identifies many of these problems and concerns that we should be addressing.</p>
<p>But I guess there’s always the risk of of overreacting and therefore damaging things that are good about our community in seeking to solve some other problems. </p>
<p>So, that said, what sort of trends come out of the data that would be of concern? I think decline in home ownership is a very big concern that has a very strong link to growing evidence of intergenerational inequality, so particularly younger people in the age range up to around 40, compared with older people, the baby boomer generation. There’s been a growth in inequality across the generations and it’s very much tied to home ownership. </p>
<p>We also we have this persistent disadvantage among many single parents and I think that’s a continuing priority for policy, in my view. And the other persistent trend that remains a concern is that household incomes are quite stagnant and that’s very much related to the stagnation in wages.</p>
<p>It’s one thing to be concerned about it but it’s less obvious what you do to address it. </p>
<p><strong>Justin Bergman:</strong> Roger, thank you so much, very illuminating. We really appreciate you breaking it down for us and taking the time to be with us. Thank you. </p>
<p><strong>Roger Wilkins:</strong> Thank you.</p>
<h2>Additional audio</h2>
<p>Kindergarten by Unkle Ho, from <a href="https://www.elefanttraks.com/">Elefant Traks</a></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/anthill-27-confidence-100183">The Anthill podcast, episode 27: Confidence</a>, from The Conversation UK.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
On today's episode, we'll hear what the huge HILDA survey says on Australians' financial literacy, energy use, how many of us are delaying getting a driver's license and how our economy is changing.Sunanda Creagh, Senior EditorJustin Bergman, International Affairs EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1004512018-07-30T19:52:09Z2018-07-30T19:52:09ZHILDA Survey reveals striking gender and age divide in financial literacy. Test yourself with this quiz<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229628/original/file-20180727-106508-4qibrv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The latest HILDA data found women exhibiting much lower levels of financial literacy than men.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/hilda">Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey</a> tells the stories of the same group of Australians over the course of their lives. Starting in 2001, the survey now tracks more than 17,500 people in 9,500 households.</p>
<p>One of the most striking findings from <a href="https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/hilda/publications/hilda-statistical-reports">this year’s HILDA report</a> is the large gender divide in financial literacy. Women exhibit much lower levels of financial literacy than men.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.oecd.org/finance/financial-education/49319977.pdf">OECD International Network on Financial Education</a> defines financial literacy as:</p>
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<p>a combination of awareness, knowledge, skill, attitude and behaviour necessary to make sound financial decisions and ultimately achieve financial wellbeing.</p>
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<p>A series of questions assessing basic competencies in financial concepts such as inflation, portfolio diversification and risk versus return, developed by <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5450829/">Annamaria Lusardi and Olivia Mitchell</a>, was put to the 17,500 HILDA respondents in 2016.</p>
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<iframe style="width:100%;height:600px;border:1px solid #cfcfcf;" src="https://www.riddle.com/a/160739?" title="Pop Quiz – How financially literate are you? Take the HILDA financial literacy test." width="100%" height="400"><section></section><section></section><section></section><section></section></iframe>
<p></p></div><p><a href="https://www.riddle.com" rel="nofollow" target="blank">Quiz Maker</a> – powered by Riddle</p><p></p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/home-ownership-falling-debts-rising-its-looking-grim-for-the-under-40s-81619">Home ownership falling, debts rising – it's looking grim for the under 40s</a>
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<p>We found that, across Australia as a whole, about 50% of men correctly answered all questions, compared with only about 35% of women.</p>
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/hilda/publications/hilda-statistical-reports">HILDA</a></span>
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<p>In a world in which women are as engaged in the modern economy as men, it is not clear why this is the case. But it very much matters.</p>
<p>The report shows that low financial literacy is associated with poor financial well-being. For example, the poverty rate among people with low financial literacy is over twice the poverty rate among people with high financial literacy.</p>
<p>Women are indeed over-represented in poverty statistics and other measures of socioeconomic disadvantage. Low financial literacy cannot be ruled out as a factor in these outcomes.</p>
<p>This is further reinforced by the finding that women do not, on average, rate themselves lower than men on their personal financial management capability. </p>
<p>They are therefore unlikely to compensate for their lower financial literacy by, for example, seeking expert advice.</p>
<p>Some of the other findings from this year’s HILDA report are covered in this short video:</p>
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<h2>Age matters too</h2>
<p>While the gender divide is the most striking finding, substantial differences across age groups are also found. The young – aged under 25 – are the least financially literate, while those approaching retirement – aged 55 to 64 – are the most financially literate.</p>
<p>Young people scored particularly poorly on the question assessing understanding of inflation. The low-inflation environment that has persisted in Australia for some time now may have contributed to this. Young people simply have not experienced much inflation in their lifetimes.</p>
<p>Financial literacy is also strongly associated with household income and household wealth. Saliency no doubt plays a role in financial literacy: people with very little money are unlikely to take much interest in financial concepts such as diversification and the risk-return trade-off. Unfortunately, this is likely to help perpetuate their low financial well-being.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/its-not-just-women-at-the-top-who-are-paid-less-than-men-88474">It's not just women at the top who are paid less than men</a>
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<h2>Financial literacy affects attitudes to finances</h2>
<p>Financial literacy is strongly connected to our attitudes to financial matters, in ways that give insights into why financial well-being might be lower for those with lower literacy.</p>
<p>Perhaps most important in this regard is that willingness to take financial risks is very low for the least financially literate. In contrast, it’s quite high for the most financially literate. </p>
<p>For example, 73% of those with low literacy report not being prepared to take any risks, compared with only 36% of those with high literacy.</p>
<p>Saving and spending horizons also tend to increase as financial literacy increases.</p>
<p>Of the least literate, 55% report that the next week or the next few months is the most important time-frame in planning saving and spending. By contrast, over two-thirds of those with high financial literacy report that the most important period in planning saving and spending is the next year, or longer. </p>
<p>Consistent with this finding, measures of “motivation traits” show that financial literacy is positively associated with “future orientation” – the extent to which one thinks about the long term when making decisions. </p>
<p>Financial literacy is also associated with lower impulsiveness and a greater desire to achieve things in life. </p>
<h2>Financial behaviours</h2>
<p>Differences in financial literacy do translate into differences in financial behaviours.</p>
<p>Perhaps unsurprising is that people with low financial literacy are less likely to get involved in decisions about household finances. This may be a rational response to the knowledge that one has low financial literacy, or it could reflect a lack of interest in (or perhaps even exclusion from) financial matters. This in turn might lead to both low participation in household decisions and low financial literacy.</p>
<p>More concerning is that low financial literacy is associated with a lower propensity to save regularly and, relatedly, a greater likelihood of experiencing financial stress, such as an inability to pay the rent or mortgage on time, or having to sell or pawn something of value.</p>
<p>The decision to hold a credit card is also a very large point of difference between low-literacy and high-literacy people. Three-quarters of people with low levels of financial literacy do not have a credit card, compared with 30% of those with high financial literacy.</p>
<p>That said, this is possibly not a bad thing. That’s because those with low financial literacy who do have credit cards are considerably less likely to pay off the outstanding balance each month than the financially literate.</p>
<p>Overall, these findings suggest much more work remains to be done to improve financial literacy in Australia – across genders, generations and income groups.</p>
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<p><em>To hear Roger Wilkins, Deputy Director (Research) of the HILDA Survey, explain the latest HILDA findings in an interview, listen to the latest episode of our podcast Trust Me, I’m An Expert over <a href="https://theconversation.com/trust-me-im-an-expert-what-the-huge-hilda-survey-reveals-about-your-economic-well-being-health-and-family-life-100751">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100451/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Wilkins receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, out today, found women exhibiting much lower levels of financial literacy than men. How do you score?Roger Wilkins, Professorial Research Fellow and Deputy Director (Research), HILDA Survey, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.