Inequality, Living Standards and the Social Wage During the 1980s

Abstract

This report addresses the role of the social wage in maintaining the living standards of Australian households and mitigating the rise in inequality in the latter half of the 1980s. The results show the important role of social wage policies over the period and highlight the way in which Medicare and other health programs, education provisions and income transfers redistribute resources within and between groups in the population. Amongst other things, the results reported here highlight how the picture of living standards which emerges from studies focusing on trends in cash income only reveals only part of the whole story.