Development in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Statistics at the Australian Bureau of Statistics

This paper outlines the ICT statistical developments that the ABS has undertaken over recent years. These developments have been on both the supply side (ICT industry) and the demand side (use of IT by sector). The content of ABS ICT surveys has changed significantly over the last few years and are expected to develop further in line with industry changes and emerging policy needs.
Recent developments in household collections have been the inclusion of IT use questions in the 2001 Census of Population and Housing and in various ABS social surveys such as Children's Participation in Culture and Leisure Activities. Annual business IT use surveys are now conducted and include topics such as Internet commerce and IT security. Biennial ICT industry surveys are conducted to provide data on ICT production, imports and exports, ICT industry employment, performance and structure information. An Internet activity survey is run every six months and provides regional Internet access details and infrastructure details on Internet service providers.
A major development for 2002–03 will be the compilation of an ICT satellite account. ABS intends to produce an ICT Information Development Plan to guide its future statistical development work in the ICT field.     

Household Surveys,Consumption, and the Measurement of Poverty

Household surveys are playing an increasingly important role in the measurement of poverty and well-being around the world. The Living Standards Measurement Study, which was begun in the World Bank under the guidance of Graham Pyatt in 1979, has played an important role in this movement. Its surveys are widely used within the Bank to measure consumption-based poverty, and survey data are now the exclusive basis for the global poverty counts. This paper discusses a number of unresolved issues in using consumption-based surveys for measuring well-being, including the choice of a money-metric versus welfare-ratio approach, the collection of suitable price information, the effects of measurement error on estimation, and methods for correcting per capita consumption for the demographic structure of the household.     

Mechanisms for controlling expenditure in the Spanish Royal Household, c.1561-c.18081

The purpose of this article is to examine the accounting and auditing in the Spanish Royal Household between 1561 and 1808. The Royal Household was the third most important item of expenditure that the State Treasury financed, after the Army and Navy and the National Debt. On studying spending control in the Royal Household, we have rejected the idea, often advanced by historiography, that there was no spending control within this institution. On the contrary, treasurers and accountants were only able to release funds for expenditure purposes on the basis of prior authorization. However, the efficiency of spending control was very limited due to technical, administrative and, above all, social and political elements.     

Measuring resource inequalities: The concepts and methodology for an area-based Gini coefficient

Although inequalities in income and expenditure are relatively well researched, comparatively little attention has been paid, to date, to inequalities in resource use. This is clearly a shortcoming when it comes to developing informed policies for sustainable consumption and social justice. This paper describes an indicator of inequality in resource use called the AR-Gini. The AR-Gini is an area-based measure of resource inequality that estimates inequalities between neighbourhoods with regard to the consumption of specific consumer goods. It is also capable of estimating inequalities in the emissions resulting from resource use, such as carbon dioxide emissions from energy use, and solid waste arisings from material resource use. The indicator is designed to be used as a basis for broadening the discussion concerning ‘food deserts’ to inequalities in other types of resource use. By estimating the AR-Gini for a wide range of goods and services we aim to enhance our understanding of resource inequalities and their drivers, identify which resources have highest inequalities, and to explore trends in inequalities. The paper describes the concepts underlying the construction of the AR-Gini and its methodology. Its use is illustrated by pilot applications (specifically, men's and boys' clothing, carpets, refrigerators/freezers and clothes washer/driers). The results illustrate that different levels of inequality are associated with different commodities. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of some possible policy implications of the AR-Gini.     

Benefit Incidence of Public Recreation Areas—Have the Winners Taken Almost All?

This study presents a framework for investigating the benefit incidence of provision of public recreation opportunities. The proportion of individuals who use outdoor recreation services increases with income, and frequency of use differs by the users’ gender and life situation (e.g., depending on whether they are students or older citizens). The decomposition of distributive incidence shows that a bias in favor of high-income groups may be accentuated when the perceived value of these services is taken into account in monetary terms. We compare alternative strategies in terms of equity for improving recreation opportunities, e.g., reduced distance to or increased acreage of recreation sites. Our results indicate that although these strategies improve the welfare distribution among the income groups, a considerable proportion of benefits nevertheless accrue to high-income groups.      

Where Should the Elderly Live and Who Should Pay for Their Care?*

We consider a model with a population consisting of earners and retired persons; elderly care is publicly provided. There is one big city, where congestion effects and agglomeration forces are at work, and a number of small villages. We show how the externalities related to population mobility lead to an inefficient spatial distribution of earners and retirees, and we characterize the second‐best solution. Decentralization of this solution in a fiscal federalism structure requires the use of taxes and subsidies proportional to the number of earners and retired persons living in the city and the villages.     

Exploring the link between household debt and income inequality: an asymmetric approach

We investigate the relationship between household debt and income inequality in the USA, allowing for asymmetry, using data over the period 1913–2008. We find evidence of an asymmetric cointegration between household debt and inequality for different regimes. Our results indicate household debt only responds to positive changes in income inequality, while there is no evidence of falling inequality significantly affecting household debt. The presence of this asymmetry provides further empirical insights into the emerging literature on household debt and inequality.