Four Dimensions of Quality in Australian Jobs

We develop and analyse comprehensive, multi-item scales of the quality of Australian jobs, using the rich measures of job characteristics from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. Through exploratory methods and multidimensional item response theory modelling, we uncover four gender-specific scales that describe the autonomy, demands/engagement, compensation adequacy and security of jobs. From 2001 to 2016, women’s job demands/engagement and compensation adequacy grew noticeably, and men’s job demands/engagement grew somewhat. Since the mid-2000s, job security has fallen for both women and men. Job quality rises with job tenure, work experience and health, and falls following involuntary job changes.     

Trying to imagineer the future? ... Don't just "imagine" inventory integrity!

Inventory integrity has been discussed, debated, and argued many times, in many organizations. The attempts at a solution have been numerous, from corrective action teams and inventory accuracy committees, to subtask groups and mandates. For a number of reasons, however, the required 95 percent integrity is seldom achieved, and never permanently. This article presents a proven, tested methodology to increase inventory integrity to 95 percent and to keep it there, in a nine-step process that takes no more than 120 days to implement.     

If at first you don’t succeed: applying for and staying on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

We examine households’ applications to and participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program using administrative records from South Carolina. We model application resolutions with multinomial logit (MNL) specifications where the possible outcomes are acceptance, denial due to income ineligibility, denial due to a failure to provide sufficient information and denial due to other reasons. For cases with successful applications, we model the durations of participation spells using competing risk hazard specifications that distinguish among exits that result from missed recertifications, financial ineligibility, incomplete or missing information and other reasons. The application and hazard outcomes depend on past programme behaviour and observed characteristics. The results indicate that a household’s application and participation history affect its subsequent application success and programme tenure.     

Transitions from Welfare and the Employment Prospects of Low-Skill Workers

This study examines the effects that labor market conditions and welfare policy changes had on single mothers' welfare participation and economic outcomes using longitudinal, individual-level data from the 1992 and 1993 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The study uses special versions of the SIPP panels that include state and county identifiers and links the individual information to county-specific measures of low-skill employment opportunities and state measures of welfare policies. It estimates transition models of program entry and exit and regression models of economic outcomes. The study finds that employment conditions and welfare benefit levels were significant determinants of single mothers' welfare participation and economic success over the period 1992-95. However, it does not find statistically distinguishable differences in participation and economic success between states that did and did not reform their welfare programs through waivers to the federal rules.     

Calibrated models

Calibrated models have become an important tool for economicresearch and policy analysis. This paper discusses and illustratesthe methodology of calibration. It also describes the rangeof questions that have been addressed with calibrated modelsand considers the problem of evaluation of calibrated models.     

FOOD STAMPS,TEMPORARY ASSISTANCE FOR NEEDY FAMILIES AND FOOD HARDSHIPS IN THREE AMERICAN CITIES

We examine how participation in the Food Stamp and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Programs is associated with self‐reported household food hardships, using data from a longitudinal survey of low‐income families living in Boston, Chicago and San Antonio. In addition to the measures of hardships and program participation, the survey includes measures of income, wealth, social resources, disability, physical health and family structure, measures that help us to account for selection between recipient and non‐recipient households. For our multivariate analyses, we estimate multiple indicator multiple cause models that are modified to incorporate discrete outcome variables and to account for longitudinal data. Estimates from these models reveal that participation in the Food Stamp Program is associated with fewer food hardships, while participation in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program has no detectable association with hardships.     

Break through to 98 percent inventory record integrity in just 120 days.

Companies have tried to live without inventory integrity, but high performance and high profitability depend on high levels of inventory integrity. Good decisions require good facts, and inventory is often the most important fact upon which business decisions are based. This article explains how to attain an inventory integrity level of between 95 and 98 percent or even higher in 120 days or less and how to keep it there.     

Financial Outcomes in Adolescence and Early Adulthood in Australian Longitudinal Data

This article describes and catalogues person-specific measures of financial outcomes that are available for adolescents and young adults in three large longitudinal Australian surveys: the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth, the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, and the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. It summarises international research that has been conducted on young people's financial outcomes, illustrating outcomes that have been investigated, research questions that have been asked, and distinctions that have been drawn between adolescents and young adults. It considers the strengths and weaknesses of the three surveys for extending this research into the Australian context.