Jenny Chesters will present a seminar on The Effect of the GFC on Wealth Inequality in Australia In the Larry Saha room (HA2175) of the Hayden-Allen building ANU.  All welcome.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Australian governments embraced neoliberalism and in the long boom that followed, total household wealth increased dramatically. That long boom ended abruptly when the Global Financial Crisis struck in 2008-09. Any examination of the distribution of wealth in Australia has been constrained by a lack of data, therefore, this paper uses two unusual sources of data, the National Accounts published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Business Review Weekly Rich Lists, to examine the relationship between total household wealth, wealth per capita and the wealth of the wealthiest Australians. The results presented here show that wealth inequality increases during periods of economic growth and decreases during periods of contraction.