Cezary A. Kapuscinski

Unemployment and Crime: Toward Resolving the Paradox

While official crime statistics from many countries show that unemployed people have high crime rates and that communities with a lot of unemployment experience a lot of crime, this cross-sectional relationship is very often not found in time-series studies of unemployment and crime. In Australia there have been no individual-level or cross-sectional studies of unemployment and adult crime which have failed to find a positive relationship and no time-series which have supported a positive relationship. Consistent with this pattern, a time series of homicide from 1921 to 1987 in Australia reveals no significant unemployment effect. A theoretical resolution of this apparent paradox is advanced in terms of the effect of female employment on crime in a partriarchal society. Crime is posited as a function of both total unemployment and female employment. When female employment is added to the model, it has a strong positive effect on homicide, and unemployment also assumes a strong positive effect.

Recent Immigrants and Housing

Immigration is part of Australia’s past economic development and growth. Equally, housing an expanding population—and the style in which it is housed—has been a keystone of the ‘Australian Dream’. Nonetheless, changing circumstances in the labour and housing markets, and the recasting of views concerning Australia’s defence needs and geographic constraints—including the cost to the environment of greater numbers—has led to concern about large scale immigration. These concerns are often voiced in the form of the following questions: How do new immigrants fare in the housing market? Do they affect the housing choices of resident Australians? Do prices rise in response to an increase in immigration?

Projections of Long-term Unemployment

Australia now has a considerable unemployment problem. One of the most important and least visible consequences of a deep recession is a large and expanding pool of people who have been unemployed for a long period of time. This is a crucial issue which has in the past been accorded less weight in policy discussion than is warranted.

Was Working Nation Working

After several months of research and consultation, the Labor government intro duced, in May 1994, with its publication of Working Nation, a set of labour market programmes targeted at the long-term unemployed. With the new Coalition government taking office in March 1996, we saw tbe end of Working Nation. Did Working Nation labour market programmes lead to a reduction in general unem ployment and a decline in long-term unemployment? This paper attempts to evoluate this particular aspect of its success by applying econometric methods to macroeconomic data. Our results suggest that although Working Nation had a very short life, it succeeded in helping the long-term unemployed: it was a valuable social and economic experiment.

Immigration and Australia’s External Account Balances

The last decade has seen a steadily increasing awareness of the role that immigration plays in Australia’s economic, social and political development. There has been a lively debate on the causes and consequences of Australia’s growing current account deficits and foreign debt. However, it is not always realised that current account deficits are not a new phenomenon for Australia. Australia has had persistent current account deficits for over the past century and a quarter except for brief periods at the beginning of the twentieth century, immediately after the Second World War, and after the commodity price boom of the 1970s.

Long-term unemployment in Australia: problems of memory and measurement

In Australian post-war economic history the last decade has seen a substantial increase in the unemployment rate and a concomitant increase in long-term unemployment (see Figures 1 and 2 and also Table 1).