How Australians live

In the past two decades developments in social policy have moved rapidly, both in Australia and throughout the Western world. Changing economic conditions have been accompanied by spectacular advances and retreats in policy and provision. Every advance and every retreat, every innovation and every change has produced winners and losers. The welfare state, despite its changing fortunes, has had a profound effect on its citizens. This book documents the theories that have set the welfare state on course, the processes by which the theories are put into effect, and their outcomes. In short, it examines the Australian welfare state in theory and practice, and in so doing describes how Australians live. This second edition of How Australians Live documents some of the changes in Australian social policy in recent years. It provides new data and time series data on various aspects of Australian society. It is a thoroughgoing revision. A comprehensive range of contemporary data, in the form of readable tables and figures, is introduced and analysed. The book examines the context within which policies affecting the population's changing fortunes are shaped, it examines the process of public policy development, and it illustrates these general points with special chapters on families, young people, the workforce and the elderly.