This publication contains current research and analysis on a broad range of issues topical to Australia's social policy and its administration. Special section: papers from the conference 'Income support, labour markets and behaviour: a research agenda'

The causes of poverty in rural China have been explained in a variety of ways. These explanations include poor natural endowments, a high dependency ratio and inadequate capital and education. These explanations are examined using a unique set of survey data.

The idea of social justice is a powerful call to collective action. While there will be some who are indifferent to the pursuit of social justice, there can be few who are against it. Education, in its tum, is a powerful instrument of collective action. It is squarely in the public domain, with...

Measures of standard of living and of poverty are plagued by the obvious gap between the relative simplicity of the indices and the infinite complexity of what they are trying to capture. Some trade-off between the simplicity desirable in an index, and real-life complexity is inevitable. The...