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Abstract
In 1983 for the first time, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released a sample of selected information from individual records from the 1981 census. This report analyses these data. It is based upon the Household Sample File of the 1981 Census. By linking information on individuals within households, it was possible to analyse the incidence and impact of unemployment within households and to show how concentrated they were.
The report has five chapters. The first introduces the topic of the concentration of unemployment in households and outlines why it is important. It also discusses the relevance to today of data based upon the situation in 1981. Chapter 2 presents the main statistics on the level of unemployment, on how many households were affected and on the types of families who lived in them. It shows how many unemployed people were in households with a multiple incidence of unemployment. In a more detailed analysis of the last topic, the relationships of unemployed people to each other within households are examined. Chapter 3 explores incomes and unemployment. It compares average income levels within the households of employed and unemployed people. Chapter 4 links data about young people who lived at home with information about their parents. It uses the logit regression technique to analyse first, the high youth unemployment rates among sole-parent families and second, the association of parents' and children's characteristics and unemployment probabilities of young people who lived with both parents.
Chapters 2 to 4 contain the main results of the report. Inevitably, because of the nature of the data source, they contain many tables and references to fairly complex statistical techniques. In general, the chapters contain tables of data and the results of statistical analysis. As far as possible, descriptions of the procedures used and discussions of the statistical significance of the results have been confined to footnotes and appendices. Chapters 2 to 4 end with summaries of the main results contained within them. Chapter 5 summarises the whole report focussing on the most important results. It outlines the relevance of these results to current policy debates.