Scientia Professor John Piggott AO, CEPAR Director, UNSW Sydney
Fundamental to good policy analysis is good data. While national survey data take this requirement some distance, older cohorts in Australia do not enjoy the same survey attention as their younger counterparts, nor are older cohorts in Australia surveyed as comprehensively as in most other countries. This gap means that Australia is more than usually reliant on administrative data to gain a sense of the realities that might underpin policy reform directed towards population ageing. And to have genuine value, a range of administrative data sets – pension, health, tax – have to be linked.
In late February, CEPAR co-hosted, with the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis (CAMA) and the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute (TTPI) at the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy, the third of our Data Workshops. The first two workshops were held back in 2019 – at ANU in April, and in December at the Department of Health. All workshops have been jointly led by CEPAR Chief Investigator and CAMA Director Warwick McKibbin, CEPAR Associate Investigator Phil Clarke (now at the University of Oxford) and Bob Breunig, Director of TTPI.
Much progress has been made in the last five years, following the 2019 events. This workshop was upbeat about further progress. Dr David Gruen, the Australian Statistician, joined the workshop, along with Professor Matthew Shapiro, of the University of Michigan, and a range of other academics and policy officials. Topics ranged from ageing to water – in many areas, data linkage is crucial for constructive policy analysis.
In such an important area as population ageing, it was heartening to see such willingness to move forward with this enterprise.