This study uses data from the 1999 to 2009 Graduate Destination Surveys to investigate the absorption of recent university graduates into the Australian labour market. The results indicate that graduates of the Group of Eight and Australian Technology Network are less likely than graduates of other universities to be employed in jobs that do not require their qualification. No university group, however, has a clear advantage in protecting its graduates from the adverse earnings consequences associated with working in such jobs. Field of study plays an important role in determining both whether graduates work in occupations that require their qualification and earnings.

Owners' estimates of the value of their home are widely used in research and form the basis of much of our understanding of household wealth. But are these estimates accurate? Using hedonic methods and data from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, I investigate this for Australian home-owners. The findings indicate that owners over-estimate their home's value by around 2.5 per cent or $100 billion economy-wide. Importantly, the extent of mis-estimation depends upon the age of the home-owner and the size of the home. Thus, some caution needs to be exercised when comparing reported housing wealth across groups, as part of these differences may reflect differential estimation errors.

Heat intolerance is a significant medical problem affecting people with multiple sclerosis (MS). For people with MS, the costs of running their air conditioners are an additional disease-related expense that must be met on top of other out-of-pocket disease-related expenses. Using the results of the 2008 Keeping Cool Survey, we estimate the relative economic disadvantage faced by MS households in trying to keep cool. We find that MS households spend around four times more on keeping cool than average Australian households. Sensitivity analysis indicates that our results are robust with respect to all key inputs and parameters.

At the current time, the measurement of well-being is the subject of controversy and debate. This introduction briefly summarises the four contributions to this debate published in this Policy Forum. All the articles are critical of using gross domestic product per capita as a measure of well-being and offer various suggestions for an improved measure.

This article considers the philosophical foundations of preference-based and capability approaches to well-being. I argue that standard preference-based approaches face difficulties in providing a satisfactory account of well-being and that the capability approach, developed by Amartya Sen, offers a superior account. In particular, I argue that subjective preference accounts of well-being are philosophically difficult to sustain and utilise in a public policy context.

In the last 2 decades, there has been a remarkable proliferation of indices of well-being which assess and rank country performance according to a diverse range of environmental, political, health, social or economic measures. This growth is a clear sign of their political importance, popular appeal and operational relevance in decision-making. This article discusses questions about the validity and scope of summary indices of well-being, as well as explores the relevance of country rankings. Acknowledging that these measures are imperfect, but that they may be the best measures we have, this article discusses how these composite indicators can be improved and how policy-makers should be using them.

There is a growing global movement to re-define progress beyond gross domestic product (GDP) and develop new measures of equitable and sustainable well-being. GDP's shortcomings as the chief measure of societal progress have been clearly exposed, but it is still widely used in this role, with increasingly adverse consequences. This article examines the lessons from this global movement and the technical and democratic requirements for developing new national progress measures. It focuses on a new Australian project, the Australian National Development Index, which will develop a composite index of national progress and key progress ‘domains’ through a national community engagement process supported by a cross-disciplinary research program.

In recent years, economists and others have returned to the question of how best to measure a country's level of well-being. This article summarises a contemporary attempt to construct an Australian index of well-being and discusses the key conceptual and methodological tradeoffs faced when seeking to be rigorous, engaging and useful in considering policy alternatives.

In 1996 and 2006, Australia conducted the International Adult Literacy Survey and the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey to measure literacy (and numeracy) competencies. Good literacy skills are increasingly essential for individuals to participate in contemporary society and the modern economy. These surveys also collected background information, enabling an examination of the factors that influence literacy and of how literacy may affect individual opportunities and outcomes. The time series of adult literacy surveys will be enhanced when the 2011–12 Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies is published in 2013.

In this article, I provide an overview of the growing literature on offshoring and wages. I begin by documenting the recent growth in goods and service offshoring. I then discuss the mechanisms through which offshoring is likely to affect wages and review the empirical literature on the impact of offshoring on both the relative and absolute wage of low-skilled workers in advanced economies. Lastly, I conclude by providing some thoughts on what governments can do to address the labour market consequences of offshoring.