Economic Wellbeing

• Published date: 01 December 2021
• Author: Roger Wilkins
• Date: 01 December 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8462.12436

The Australian Economic Review, vol. 54, no. 4, pp. 469–481 DOI: 10.1111/1467-8462.12436

Economic Wellbeing

Roger Wilkins*

Abstract

Over its 21 years, the HILDA Survey has

assembled an unrivalled array of data on the

economic wellbeing of the Australian popula-

tion. This review summarises the main themes

of the published research using this data.

1. Introduction

Since its inception, the HILDA Survey has

regularly collected a large amount of

information on the financial or economic

wellbeing of individuals and households.

This includes the core personal and house-

hold income data collected annually, as well

as detailed household wealth data collected

every 4 years. Perceptions of financial

wellbeing, experience of financial stress

and the ability to raise money in an

emergency have also been measured in

every wave of the study while data on

material deprivation was collected in 2014

and 2018. Moreover, various components of

household expenditure have been collected

annually since 2002.

Cross‐sectional analyses of economic well-

being and its distribution, while crucial to

assessment of the functioning of a society,

have increasingly given way internationally to

inquiry into how that distribution came about,

how representative it is of the longer‐term

experiences of individuals, and the extent to

which one's place in the distribution is

dictated by one's family background, all lines

of inquiry which almost always require long-

itudinal data.

The HILDA Survey is the only data source

in Australia providing longitudinal household

income data for a representative sample of

Australia's population. Administrative long-

itudinal data sets exist, but do not provide

complete household data. In particular, the

new ALife longitudinal tax data file provides

good information on taxable personal income,

* Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research,

University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia, email:

<r.wilkins@unimelb.edu.au>.

© 2021 The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research,

Faculty of Business and Economics

Published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd