Dr Bruce Bradbury

Overview

Dr Bruce Bradbury is a Senior Research Fellow at the SPRC and has worked at the Centre since 1983. He is an economist and statistician with over 20 years of experience analysing social policies and programs. His research interests include the measurement of living standards, child poverty, income support and labour market policies, consumer equivalence scales, and geographic dimensions of social policies. He has extensive experience in the analysis of large survey and administrative databases and in the management of quantitative research projects. He has published in prominent journals such as Economica, The Review of Income and Wealth, The Economic Record, Journal of Sociology and Fiscal Studies. He is a member of the academic advisory committees for both the HILDA and LSAC surveys – two of the largest social data collections in Australia.

Research Summary

Research interests include the measurement of living standards, child poverty, tax-transfer policy, labour market policy, consumer equivalence scales, and geographic dimensions of social policies.

Teaching

HDR Supervision Bruce Bradbury is available to supervise higher degree research students in the following fields: Poverty, inequality and living standards, economics of the household, economic demography, income support and labour market policies. Bruce currently supervises Yuvisthi Naidoo (enrolled in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences) and Anna Zhu (in the Australian School of Business).

Publications

Commentary
Saving the young from superannuation The under-50s should pay less super.
Tax talk-fests and importance of being dismal Why efficient taxes are unpopular.
Are employers using part-time work to hang on to their workers? No - at least not in the way most commentators think.
Is Australian social protection ready for the great recession? No - just as well we missed it.
Regular inflation in Australia (PDF). Reconciling statistical evidence of low inflation with public perceptions of high inflation. NB Only includes data up to March 2008.

Recent Presentations and Papers

Bradbury, Bruce, Miles Corak, Jane Waldfogel and Elizabeth Washbrook (2011) Inequality during the Early Years: Child Outcomes and Readiness to Learn in Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and the United States IZA discussion paper 6120 .

Four papers on housing wealth and retirement:
- Bradbury, Bruce (2010), Asset rich, but income poor: Australian housing wealth and retirement FaHCSIA Social Policy Research Paper No 41.
- Bradbury, Bruce and Bina Gubhaju (2010), Housing costs and living standards among the elderly FaHCSIA Occasional Paper No 31.
- Bradbury, Bruce (2010), The fourth retirement pillar in rich nations (PDF), and
- Yates, Judy and Bradbury, Bruce (2009), Home ownership as a (crumbling) fourth pillar of social insurance in Australia (LWS working paper) (PDF) (see below for published version).

Work on the Age Pension relativity Modelling the Relative Needs of Single and Couple Age Pensioners (PDF)

Selected Books, Monographs and Journal Articles

Yates, J. and Bradbury, B. (2010), 'Home ownership as a (crumbling) fourth pillar of social insurance in Australia', Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 25 (2), 193-211, DOI 10.1007/s10901-010-9187-4.

Bradbury, B. (2008), "Time and the cost of children" Review of Income and Wealth, 54(3), September (Abstract). See also this earlier version and a related SPRC Discussion Paper (PDF).

Saunders, P., and Bradbury, B. (2006), 'Monitoring trends in poverty and inequality: Data, methodology and measurement', The Economic Record 82 (258, September): 341-364.

Bradbury, B.and Norris, K., (2005), "Income and Separation" Journal of Sociology 41(4):425-446 (Abstract) (Earlier conference paper version).

Bradbury, B. (2005), 'Missing and perturbed data from the Australian census (PDF)", The Australian Economic Review, 38(1): 99-107
(Journal available at www.blackwell-synergy.com).

Bradbury, B. (2004) "Targeting Social Assistance" in Fiscal Studies 25(3):305-324. (Abstract).

Bradbury, B. (2004), "Consumption and the Within-Household Income Distribution: Outcomes from an Australian 'Natural Experiment" CESifo Economic Studies Vol 50 3/2004.

Bradbury, B. and Chalmers, J. (2004), 'Location and Unemployment' The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 14(2):208-234.

Bradbury, B. (2003), "The Welfare Interpretation of Consumer Equivalence Scales" (PDF) International Journal of Social Economics 30(7):770-787. (With permission of Emerald Journals).

Bradbury, B. (2003), Child Poverty: A Review Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services, Policy Research Paper No. 20.

Bradbury, B.; Jenkins, S.P. and Micklewright, J. (eds, 2001) The Dynamics of Child Poverty in Industrialised Countries CUP. (publication details)

Bradbury, B. and Jäntti, M. (2001) “Child Poverty Across the Industrialised World: Evidence from the Luxembourg Income Study” in Vleminckx, K., Smeeding, T.M. (eds.) Child Well-being, Child Poverty and Child Policy in Modern Nations, The Policy Press, Bristol.

Bradbury, B. (1997) ‘The Living Standards of the Low-Income Self-Employed’ Australian Economic Review 30(4):374-89.

Bradbury, B. (1997) ‘Measuring Poverty Changes with Bounded Equivalence Scales: Australia in the 1980s’ Economica 64:245-64.

Code
SAS utility macros Documentation is in the header of each file. Of particular interest for HILDA users will be the HILDALong.sas macro which creates a long file from all HILDA waves and the ABSJack macro which does Jackknife replication using replicate weights (for either ABS or HILDA data).
Old Australian Tax/transfer macros(See TATLIB.TXT in the folder).