Alan Tapper

The Australian Welfare State and the Neoliberalism Thesis

This paper uses Australian Bureau of Statistics fiscal incidence figures to track trends in the Australian welfare state across the period 1984 to 2004. Its general aim is to assess the proposition that recent governments have been ‘grave-diggers’ of the welfare state in Australia. More specifically, it tracks the overall level of social expenditure at the household level and the degree of vertical redistribution between households. Since the period in question covers twelve years of Labor and eight years of Coalition government in Canberra, the authors also seek evidence of political effect in welfare state trends. Their general conclusion is that far from succumbing to neoliberalism, the Australian welfare state became if anything even larger over this period. Neither bipartisan economic liberalisation, nor competing party welfare policies, made much difference to the welfare state when viewed through a fiscal incidence lens.

Economic inequality in Australia: A reassessment

This article reviews and analyses the evidence on the distribution of income and wealth in Australia since the 1960s. A number of scholars – most prominently among them Thomas Piketty – suggest that inequality has been increasing across the advanced capitalist world. Kuznets’ benign picture of an ‘inverted u-curve’ depicting declining inequality in modern industrial society is replaced with an altogether different and potentially quite alarming one. Does this hold for Australia? Surveying 25 income trend and 17 wealth distribution studies, we draw on the best available evidence and find that overall there has been far less of a rising inequality trend than is often assumed or argued. 本文分析了1960年代以来澳大利亚的收入及财富分配。有一些学者——其中最著名的是托马斯·皮凯提——认为所有发达资本主义国家的不平等都在加大。库兹涅倒U曲线所描绘的近代工业社会不平等不断减弱的美丽图画被一个全然不同、令人震惊的景象所取代。那么澳大利亚也是这样么？笔者考察25种收入趋势、17种财富分配的研究后发现，总的来说，不平等远并不像人们所常说的那样增加。

Trends in Australian government health expenditure by age: a fiscal incidence analysis.

OBJECTIVE Australian government health expenditure per capita has grown steadily across the past few decades, but little is known about trends in the age distribution of health expenditure. METHODS In this paper, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) fiscal incidence studies, which track expenditure at the household level between 1984 and 2010, are used to shed light on this topic. RESULTS The main finding was that spending has shifted focus from the younger half to the older half of the population. This shift is evident in three areas: (1) acute care (hospitals); (2) community health services (doctors); and (3) pharmaceuticals. Together, these areas account for approximately 88% of expenditure. The trend is independent of demographic aging. It is unlikely to reflect changes in population health. Its explanation is open to debate. CONCLUSIONS Growth in expenditure per household has been more than threefold faster for elderly than young households. Across this period, expenditure per household per week has increased by 51% for the young, by 79% for the middle aged and by 179% for the elderly. This age-related growth is most prominent in expenditure on acute care, community health services and pharmaceuticals. WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT THE TOPIC?: The Productivity Commission has published figures that relate age and Australian heath expenditure. However, there has been no published study of age-related trends in Australian health expenditure. WHAT DOES THIS PAPER ADD?: In addition to tracking age-related trends across 26 years, this paper adds a breakdown of those trends into four categories of expenditure, namely acute care, community health services, pharmaceutical benefits, and other. This breakdown shows that the trends vary by expenditure type. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS?: The paper shows that forward projections in health expenditure need to take into account age-related trends as well as demographic trends.