Lunchtime Seminar - Dr Nicholas Biddle, ANU

The new economics of wellbeing and the implications for Indigenous policy, presented by Dr Nicholas Biddle, ANU

Abstract: There are few more intractable policy problems in Australia than improving the relative socioeconomic position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Numerous government and academic reports document the large and persistent gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in a range of outcomes, with those gaps often widening through time, rather than closing. One area of research that has the potential to contribute to improved Indigenous policy is a better understanding of the causes of subjective wellbeing, and the effect that variation in subjective wellbeing has on the decisions and behaviour of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. This presentation will begin with a summary of the economics of wellbeing. Published and new research on Indigenous wellbeing will then be presented, followed by a discussion of the implications for policy and the State/Territory, Commonwealth and community level.

Bio: Dr. Nicholas Biddle is a Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) at the Australian National University (ANU) and Deputy Director of the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods. He has a Bachelor of Economics (Hons.) from the University of Sydney and a Master of Education from Monash University. He also has a PhD in Public Policy from the ANU where he wrote his thesis on the benefits of and participation in education of Indigenous Australians. He previously held a Senior Research Officer and Assistant Director position in the Methodology Division of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.