Rafal Chomik

Research Topic: Demography and inequality: Insights from Australia and the Asia-Pacific

Supervisor: Associate Professor Bruce Bradbury

Co-Supervisors: John Piggott, Peter Whiteford

The PhD thesis will explore interactions between demography and different forms of inequality, with implications for retirement income and health system design in Australia and East Asia-Pacific. For example, to what extent does income distribution widen over the life-cycle and compresses under different pension regimes; and how do mortality differences evolve over time and what impact do these have on the lifetime effectiveness of redistributive policies?

Research Summary

The PhD thesis will be in four parts, which correspond to thesis chapters. These will develop a deeper understanding of:

1. the overall income, wealth and health inequality trends across the region, including interactions with demography and retirement income policies, potentially involving microsimulation modelling
2. health and mortality gradients using longitudinal data to test the changes in the social gradient over time, by age group, and potentially across different countries
3. mortality gradients in small areas, creating abridged life expectancy tables for smaller regions in Australia than is currently available from official statistics, and
4. the political economy of inequality by collecting tailored survey data that examine attitudes to trends, policies and differences by cohort.