Peter Mcdonald

• Professor at University of Melbourne

We present and discuss the General Family Allowance (GFA), in Italian: Assegno Unico Universale , a measure that the Italian Government and Parliament have put in place from March 2022 addressing the persistent low fertility in Italy. The GFA modernizes monetary transfers in favor of families with children in Italy, covering large groups of familie...

This study explores the provision of care for older persons in rural areas of ageing Indonesia. Using data from Ageing in Rural Indonesian Study, we examine who needs care, who provides care, and how care operates across socio-demographic settings. We found that one contributing factor to gender inequality in old age is the disproportionate amount...

Little research attention has been given to investigative inequalities in the economic wellbeing of older persons in rural Indonesia. This paper aims to investigate factors contributing to the level of the economic disadvantage of older persons and the influence of financial support from adult children in relieving old-age poverty. Data are drawn f...

The generational economy—which is that aspect of the economy that pertains to the economic activities of, and the economic relationships between, different ages and generations—can be evaluated on the basis of a number of different criteria. The most critical of these include the financial sustainability of the generational economy, the intergenera...

Sustained below replacement fertility leads to declining population size. Several countries in Asia have experienced below replacement fertility for many years. The paper applies a novel approach to examining the viability of using immigration to achieve zero population growth in six Asian countries: China, Japan, Republic of Korea, Thailand, Singa...

From 1995 in Australia, the selection of new permanent residents became more focused on high skills, and a more comprehensive and efficient form of temporary skilled migration was introduced. In the early 2000s, immigration was further enhanced by encouragement of two other forms of temporary migration: international students and working holiday ma...

Background In analysing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the labour market, attention has focussed on younger people, leaving a research gap when it comes to outcomes for older Australians aged 50 years or over, in terms of employment, unemployment, underemployment and hours worked. Aims To describe levels of labour force participation, unem...

The future of Australia’s population by birthplace composition according to the four specified projection scenarios is presented in this chapter. In all scenarios the overseas-born population composition becomes less Europe-born and more Asia-born and more Africa & Middle East-born. The changing size and age-sex structure of these populations is il...

This chapter summarises the key points of the research, notes some of the benefits of a large and diverse migrant population, and describes policy challenges which lie ahead. These include measures to avoid economic and geographic segregation, prevent discrimination, and manage public opinion. We also mention some of the limitations of our study.

This chapter describes the population projection modelling, including details of the birthplace-specific cohort-component model, the birthplace categories chosen, input data estimation, adjustment and smoothing, and projection assumptions. It summarises the main features of the four main projection scenarios, which are Pre-COVID Trends (assuming a...

This section presents summary profiles of the Australian population by country of birth according to the Pre-COVID Trends scenario. There are three sections. The first section presents profiles for the Australian population as a whole, the Australia-born population and the overseas-born population. The second section presents profiles for 26 birthp...

This chapter presents a brief overview of past international migration trends and policies, and their effect on the growth and diversity of Australia’s population. It covers the post-World War Two migration schemes, the dismantling of the White Australia Policy, and the increasing diversity of migrant origins.

Inequality between generations is a central feature of human societies. Moreover, within human societies many institutions have developed that mould and shape intergenerational inequality, including the state. Nevertheless, intergenerational inequality has typically been only loosely defined as a concept. This article examines intergenerational ine...

Australia and New Zealand have a long history of accepting international migrants. Both countries rank among the highest in the world in relation to the proportion of the population that is born in another country. Given that the birth rate has been at a reasonable level for over 40 years, debate about population is heavily centred upon internation...

Until the 1970s the Asia-born population of Australia remained small due to the racist White Australia Policy which denied entry to non-Europeans. Following its abolition in the early 1970s, Asian immigration progressively intensified, and in 2016 the Asia-born population of the country reached a total of 2.7 million, though the older population ag...

Australia’s population is growing, ageing and exhibiting increasing heterogeneity with respect to birthplace and ethnic composition. Yet, little is understood about the levels of English language proficiency among the next generation of older migrants in Australia. Utilising a modified cohort-component model incorporating detailed language proficie...

An emerging scholarship indicates that the negative educational gradient in fertility preference has reversed in some low-fertility societies in the West. This paper explores the association between education and fertility preference in Greater Jakarta. We use longitudinal data from 962 young adults surveyed in 2010 and 2014. We look at two complem...

Many of the European migrant populations which settled in Australia in the three decades after World War Two are now much older, and their aged care and health care needs are changing. While there is a considerable literature on individual aspects of ageing in many migrant groups (particularly as it pertains to culturally appropriate aged care), li...

Abstract Social taboos and stigmas around sexuality and non-marital sex in Indonesia have led to substantial underreporting of the prevalence of premarital sex. In this study, we explore underreporting amongst young adults in Greater Jakarta. We use the 2010 Greater Jakarta Transition to Adulthood Survey (GJTAS), a survey of more than 3000 people a...

Background: Studies have shown how births exhibit seasonal patterns, with peaks and troughs in particular months and seasons. Most of this literature focuses on national-level patterns mainly in countries of the northern hemisphere. Objective: The aim of the paper is to describe key features of contemporary birth seasonality at a subnational scale...

Much of the literature on assortative mating has centred on the social contexts of immigrant‐receiving countries in the West. This article examines ethnic assortative mating (endogamy) against rising volumes and intensity of migration within a multi‐ethnic lower middle‐income country. We used full enumeration data from the 2010 Indonesian Populatio...

In recent years, Australia’s older population (aged 65 and over) has been growing rapidly, accompanied by a shift in its country of birth composition. Although a great deal of research has been undertaken on past and current aspects of Australia’s migrant groups, little attention has been paid to future demographic trends in older populations. The...

Background In the first decade of the 21st century, employment at older ages surged in Australia, benefitting the Australian economy. Subsequent to 2010, however, employment rates at older ages ceased rising for older men and the increases were much more moderate for women. Aim The aim of this paper is to examine these older-age employment trends i...

In a relatively short period, Australia has shifted from being a country where migration from Asia was heavily restricted under the White Australia Policy to one where most of the immigrants arriving in a very large migration programme are from Asia. The paper traces this transition and demonstrates the central role that the international student p...

Using Australian census data, the paper examines the incidence of poor English competency in Australia from 1981 onwards. The paper examines English competency in relation to various characteristics such as sex, age, language spoken, visa type, citizenship, duration of residence and location. It finds that there was a sharp rise in the numbers of p...

Indonesia – home to the world’s largest Muslim population – is an ethnically diverse archipelago with sizeable non-Muslim communities. There is a dearth of demographic study on how religions shape patterns of marriage partnerships in Indonesia. We use full enumeration data from the 2010 Indonesian Population Census to examine the incidence, regiona...

Following a number of difficulties measuring net overseas migration (NOM), since 2006 the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has defined a usual resident of Australia as a person who spends at least 12 months of any given 16-month period in Australia. This is ascertained through matching of individual records for persons moving across Australia’...

Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population. In contrast to much of the Middle East, veiling in Indonesia is neither a deeply rooted cultural practice, nor it is universally practised among Muslim women. Just 30 years ago it was rare to see an Indonesian woman wearing a hijab or veil. Today, veiling has become a relatively common pra...

Rural areas in Indonesia are older relative to urban areas. This paper questions how levels of social engagement vary across among the elderly in rural Indonesia. A sample of 2750 respondents aged 60 and over was drawn from 10 purposely-selected relatively "old" villages. Our three measures of social engagement are: participation in income-generati...

Objective To examine the role of variations in mature age labour force participation on labour force outcomes over Australia's recent past (2000-2015) and immediate future (to 2030). Methods To estimate the impact of rises in mature age participation on observed labour supply, we utilise demographic decomposition techniques. To examine future labou...

Objective: To investigate intergenerational equity in consumption using the Australian National Transfer Accounts (NTA). Methods: Australian NTA estimates of consumption were used to investigate disparities in consumption between people of different ages and generations in Australia between 1981-1982 and 2009-2010. Results: There is a clear pa...

Background: Immigration to Australia pre 1995 was largely low skilled. Recessions led to competition between low-skilled domestic workers and new immigrants and subsequent cuts in migration intakes. Historical changes in birth rates, increased participation in tertiary education, increasing numbers retiring and the relatively rapid restructuring of...

Australia’s population profile has been ageing continuously for the past 150 years, but the rate of this ageing will be greater in the period 2010–2020 due to the post-World War II baby boom generation. The extent of future ageing in Australia is contingent on future fertility levels in particular but also upon the level of international migration....

The Islamic Republic of Iran has experienced a remarkable demographic transition over the last three decades. As a result of social, demographic and economic changes, Iran’s fertility declined from 7.0 births per woman in 1980 to around 1.8 to 2.0 in 2011 based on our estimation (McDonald et al. 2015). The initial rise and rapid fall of fertility a...

Population ageing through much of the developed world presents the opportunity for a massive transfer of wealth across generations. One important and understudied intergenerational transfer in Australia occurs at or near death through inheritance or inter vivo transfers. In Australia, the number of deaths is projected to increase 13% in 10 years an...

This article addresses the question of whether a shift to a self-chosen marriage partner means that traditional cultural norms stressing family influence on spouse selection have been weakened by inroads of modern norms of greater individual autonomy in the marriage process. Using a representative sample of 1552 married young adults (aged 20–34) in...

Canada and Australia are countries that, through their histories, have had many similarities as described later in the paper. However, they have two obvious differences. First, Australia has no equivalent to the province of Quebec and is not bi-lingual[B1] . If Quebec’s fertility trend was a mirror image of the trends in other provinces in Canada,...

This paper explores the effects of population ageing in Asia. Standard demographic dependency ratios leave out much of economic significance from demographic projections. We examine, adapt and estimate various measures of dependency, indicative of health, long term care, labour market, economic wellbeing, and fiscal sustainability, and relate them...

Declining fertility and mortality rates in the second half of the twentieth century have led to the twenty-first century being characterised as the century of the aging population. Concurrently, the decline in the numbers of young people entering the labour force is exacerbating the problems arising from the aging population. Implications of these...

The Jakarta Mega Urban Region (MUR) has expanded to become one of the largest mega-urban regions in the world. In this paper, we revisit Castle's seminal study on the education and ethnic composition of Jakarta using the 1961 Population Census. Using data from the full count 2010 Population Census, we examine the spatial patterns in the educational...

This paper examines regional, ethnic-specific patterns and individual-level correlates in same ethnic marriages (endogamy) and ethnic intermarriages in Indonesia. With data from over 47 million couples in prevailing marriages from the full enumeration of the 2010 Census, we outline the provincial variations in endogamy against development indicator...

Background In 2013 a draft population bill was introduced in the Iranian Parliament. Based on the presumption that fertility in Iran had fallen to a very low level, the bill proposed a wide range of pronatalist policies with the aim of increasing fertility to 2.5 births per woman. The draft law called for restrictions on the employment of women and...

The paper describes the evolution of migration policy in Australia from the 1950s onwards. It focuses in particular on the period after 1995 when the Australian Government concentrated its migration program on skilled immigrants, both permanent and temporary. While conceived as separate programs, over time, the permanent and temporary movements hav...

Australia’s population grew rapidly during most of the nineteenth century, based on high fertility and policies that encouraged immigration. From the beginning of the twentieth century through the end of the Second World War, the birth rate fell sharply, and net migration was close to zero. After the Second World War, the government initiated polic...

Background: The high incidence of young people dropping out of school prior to completing secondary schooling remains a nationwide problem in Indonesia. While it is commonly assumed that early school-leavers will become child workers, in fact little is known about their transition to adulthood. Objective: Using retrospective data from a sample of...

In the context of its long-term planning, from time to time the Indonesian government publishes an official population projection. The latest projection was released on 29 January 2014. In this article, I describe and evaluate the methods and assumptions used to produce the projection, and provide key results.Dalam konteks perencanaan jangka panjan...

Having reduced its fertility rate over the past 40 years, Indonesia has reached a new demographic crossroad. Its fertility rate is now around 2.5 births per woman, which, if sustained, would add substantial numbers to Indonesia's population in the future. There are concerns within Indonesia that the present level of population growth is an obstacle...

Using data from a representative survey (N=3,006) and in-depth interviews (N=80), this paper examines the socio-demographic nature of the digital divide among young adults in Greater Jakarta. Results from the 2010 Greater Jakarta Transition to Adulthood Survey indicate that 85 per cent of respondents owned a mobile phone. Access to Internet and its...

In Indonesian primary schools, sex education is implicitly integrated into various related subjects, such as science, biology, social studies and religion. The technical facts of ovulation and sperm are mentioned in biology, although little or no connection is made between this process and sexual intercourse. By the end of primary school, therefore...

This chapter examines how relationship pathways to the first birth changed in Australia over a 40-year period using data from the Negotiating the Life Course project. During this period, 1975 to 2005, the age at first birth rose substantially and a higher proportion of women did not have a first birth. It is a period in which divorce rates rose and...

After a sharp fall in the 1990s, Iran’s fertility decline slowed down during the 2000s and TFR has fallen to around replacement level . Following two decades of fertility control policies, more recently, the Iranian Government has been concerned that fertility will fall to a very low level and a draft pronatalist policy has been designed and is bei...

Introduction: Population ageing generates many challenges and concerns for the economy and for the health care system of Australia. The cohort of baby boomers is now entering the retirement ages and eligibility for the age pension. This study focuses on investigation of disability among elderly people in Australia and assistance that they need for...

This article examines the impact of internal migration, and its timing, on young women’s transition to adulthood. Using the 2010 Greater Jakarta Transition to Adulthood Survey, we identify five key groups of women living in Greater Jakarta: those who were born there, those who migrated before the age of 10, those who migrated between ages 10 to 17,...

BACKGROUND Gender equity theory in relation to fertility argues that very low fertility is the result of incoherence in the levels of gender equity in individually oriented social institutions and family-oriented social institutions. The salience of gender to the fertility transition is strong in theory but not as strong in specification of testabl...

This chapter deals with challenges for fertility and family research in Europe. It discusses five major areas in which enhanced research efforts could make considerable contributions to the understanding of present and future fertility and family development: the development of more accurate measurements of fertility, the inclusion of institutions...

This paper examines the relative education and employment outcomes among young migrants and non-migrants in Greater Jakarta in 2009/2011. Using data from the 2010 Greater Jakarta Transition to Adulthood Survey that includes 3006 respondents aged 20 to 34 years old, the paper highlights the importance of the age at migration in influencing the patte...

Iran has had replacement fertility since 2000. Upholding a small family size has led some couples to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Abortion is, however, permitted only on medical grounds in Iran. Using data from the Iran Low Fertility Survey, this study assessed sociodemographic correlates of abortion among a random sample of 5526 ever-married wo...

The demographic assumptions and outcomes in the three successive Intergenerational Reports have differed enormously. This has brought a degree of derision upon the production of these reports in the serious press. Furthermore, the Intergenerational Reports’ projections of labour force participation rates have proven to be very wrong in the short te...

Never before have parents in most Western societies had their first children as late as in recent decades. What are the central reasons for postponement? What is known about the link between the delay of childbearing and social policy incentives to counter these trends? This review engages in a systematic analysis of existing evidence to extract th...

In broad terms, the division in Europe between countries with very low fertility and countries with sustainable fertility matches Esping-Anderson’s classification of the same countries into ‘conservative’ and ‘social democratic’ (Esping-Anderson 1990). A central difference between these two types relates to their preferred models of the family. The...

Britain and many other European countries have been important sources of settler migration to Australia for more than two hundred years. While the sources of settler migration to Australia have diversified in the last thirty years to include non-European countries, with the current emphasis on skills in Australia's migration policy, many skilled pe...

In any study of fertility, marital status is important to the extent that it affects three stages of reproduction: intercourse, conception and parturition (VandenHeuvel and McDonald 1994, p. 69). It is generally assumed that early marriage is associated with a high proportion eventually marrying. Rising mean ages at marriage and rising percentages...

Cet article tente d’expliquer pourquoi les pays anglophones ont des taux de fertilité élevés malgré le fait qu’ils ne disposent pas d’aides familiales de même niveau qu’en France et dans les pays nordiques. L’absence relative d’aides publiques en direction des familles a mené au développement d’arrangements informels pour concilier vie familiale et...

Using data from the 2002 Iran Fertility Transition Survey, we examined birth control use between marriage and first pregnancy. We focused on the post-1990 increase in birth control use and develop two explanations. The first posits that birth control use reflects a new marriage form, the conjugal marriage, which places a heightened value on the spo...

This paper examines contraceptive method use at different stages of the reproductive life course. Previous research on contraceptive practice in developed countries typically applies age as a proxy for reproductive history. While age is an essential and useful life course measure for understanding contraceptive use, investigations of contraceptive...

This study examines the changing social and political context of adolescent sexual and reproductive health policy in Indonesia. We describe how, in 2001, Indonesia was on the brink of implementing an adolescent reproductive health policy that was consistent with international agreements to which the Indonesian government was a party. Although the h...

The Asia-Pacific region is a significant source of skilled temporary migration to Australia. The paper provides an overview of recent trends in skilled temporary migration from Asia-Pacific countries to Australia and compares the Asia-Pacific migrants with migrants from other regions to investigate whether the Asia-Pacific migrants are selective of...

The cross-sectional or synthetic parity progression model provides an alternative to conventional age-based approaches to the study of fertility trends. Instead of examining births by age of mother, this method examines fertility trends according to the number of births that a women has had already (parity) in association with the time since the mo...

Confounding all conventional wisdom, the fertility rate in the Islamic Republic of Iran fell from 7.0 births per woman in 1979 to 1.9 births per woman in 2006. That this, the largest and fastest fall in fertility ever recorded, should have occurred in one of the worlds few Islamic Republics demands explanation. This is the purpose of this book. Con...

In this book, we have set out to contribute to knowledge of the determinants of the fertility transition, the movement of a country's fertility rate from a high level to a moderate or low level. We are fortunate in that in the case that we use, Iran, the decline is recent and it has occurred over a short period of time. The recency of the decline h...

For the first time in Iran, the 2005 Iran Low Fertility Survey collected information on the full history of women's contraceptive use, that is, for every month of their life from the time that they married. These data provide important insights into the changing contraceptive behaviour of successive generations of Iranian married women. The chapter...

Chapters 6 and 7 have shed light on family planning use as the main proximate determinant of fertility. However, given the fact that the onset of fertility decline occurred a few years before the revival of the official family planning program in 1989 and the evidence of use both traditional and modern methods of contraception by a significant mino...

Fertility decline in Iran needs to be set within the socio-economic and cultural context of the twentieth century and particularly the post-revolutionary era. This includes the progress of institutional development, particularly in rural areas, legitimization of family planning programs by religious leaders and government officials, the rise of edu...

Autonomy defined as ‘the capacity to manipulate one's personal environment’ indicates the technical, social, and psychological ability to obtain information and to use it in decision making processes regarding one's private concerns and those of one's intimates’ (Dyson and Moore 1983, p. 45). The concept of autonomy is multidimensional, and include...

Iran, along with other Muslim countries, Indonesia, Pakistan, Tunisia, Egypt, and Turkey, officially adopted a population policy in the 1960s to reduce population growth by implementing family planning (Nortman and Hofstatter 1978). The first general family planning clinic was established in 1968 in Tehran (Ministry of Health 2003). By 1976, the Ir...

This chapter documents the changes in fertility in Iran since the 1970s. Own-children data from the 1986, 1996 and 2006 Censuses as well as the 2000 Iran Demographic and Health Survey (IDHS) enable analysis of single-year fluctuations of fertility over the last three decades. The chapter describes the levels, trends and patterns of fertility in Ira...

1: The fall in Iranian fertility: introduction and theoretical considerations.-2: The social, economic and cultural contexts of population policy changes in Iran.-3: National and provincial level fertility trends in Iran, 1972-2006.-4: Fertility dynamics using parity progression ratios.-5: Effects of marital fertility and nuptiality on fertility tr...

Consanguineous marriage has been the culturally preferred form of marriage in Iran. This paper examines the extent to which education, urbanization and changes in modes of economic production have affected the incidence of consanguineous marriage and attitudes towards consanguineous marriages. The 2002 Iran Fertility Transition Survey conducted in...

While most countries of destination of temporary migrants expect them to return home, it is likely that some temporary migration will become permanent if the migrants decide that they would like to remain longer or indefinitely for various reasons. This paper examines the factors associated with temporary migrants’ decision to become or not become...

Academy of Social Sciences Australia