The Value of Education - Relationships with Other Socioeconomic Variables

Alan Mackay, Go8 Director, Information Strategy, presented a paper at the 2011 Forum of the Australasian Association for Institutional Research. The paper used previously unpublished data from several Australian Bureau of Statistics surveys to demonstrate the relationships between educational qualification levels and

-employment

-unemployment

-income

-self-assessed health and health risk factors (psychological distress; smoking; risky alcohol consumption; obesity)

-volunteering

-community participation

-crime victimisation

-home ownership or rental.

Age/sex disaggregations of several variables were explored.

For several of these variables, there is a strong gradient observed across the educational attainment spectrum.

The presentation can be viewed or downloaded from HERE

Further work is planned to present data on the social and economic benefits of education.