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To explore sleep patterns in indigenous Australian children and assess the role of sleep timing in longitudinal changes in body mass index (BMI). Latent profile analysis was conducted with the Australian Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC) cohort data (wave 5), to determine distinct patterns of bed and wake timing, taking account of weekday sleep duration, weekday and weekend bedtimes, and weekday wake times. Multilevel models with a random intercept were used to investigate the ...

The present thesis explores the effects of racism on Aboriginal children’s social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) and Aboriginal pregnant women’s mental health and wellbeing. Identification of protective factors against the effects of racism on child wellbeing was also contemplated. The thesis comprises seven chapters. Chapter 1 includes a review of the literature on characteristics of the Aboriginal Australian population and the effects of racism across the lifespan. This chapter also contemp...

The aim of this paper is to summarise existing evidence and new analyses that shed light on the role of reconciliation in schools and early learning services in particular, and in education more broadly. We present the first analysis in Australia of the relationship between racism/discrimination and cognitive development among the Indigenous Australian population, showing a negative and statistically significant longitudinal relationship. We discuss the policy implications of these findings...

Households are important health contexts, providing social, emotional, financial and material support, but little is known about the role of household composition in the social etiology of Indigenous health. Our research is framed by an Indigenous standpoint, using eight waves of data from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children. We investigated whether household composition and change in household composition were associated with the self-reported general health of Indigenous children ...

This paper provides a brief summary of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, a nationally representative household panel survey. It describes the survey’s key design features, provides an overview of its content, and reports on response rates and sample sizes. It also highlights a few examples of research utilising the data, discusses two challenges currently facing the study, and provides details on how to access the data.

Participation in sport and physical activity can improve academic outcomes and has been identified as a potential mechanism for addressing educational disadvantage and 'closing the gap' in Australian Indigenous communities. To explore this possibility in relation to sport and lifestyle we performed a cluster analysis on data from the Footprints in Time study (also known as the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children), using data from Waves 3-6 (2010-2013, ages 5-9 years) of this cohort stud...

This critical systematic review of Australian research literature provides insights into the aspirations of Indigenous communities to collaborate with schools in establishing local Indigenous language and cultural programmes. This systematic review investigates the body of Australian research into the cultural, social and educational impacts on those Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students who have had opportunities to engage with these school-based Indigenous languages and/or cultu...

In Australia and internationally, there are increasing calls for the use of strengths-based methodologies, to counter the dominant deficit discourse that pervades research, policy, and media relating to Indigenous health and wellbeing. However, there is an absence of literature on the practical application of strengths-based approaches to quantitative research. This paper describes and empirically evaluates a set of strategies to support strengths-based quantitative analysis. A case study abo...

Objective: Sport may promote academic performance through physiological and psychosocial mechanisms. We aimed to examine the association between sports participation and academic performance in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. Methods: Participants were from four successive waves of Australia’s Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (n ¼ 303, baseline age 5–6 y). Cumulative sports participation was regressed against academic performance from two standardised tests. Res...

Indigenous fathers play a central role in the lives of Indigenous children growing up strong. For Australia’s Indigenous people, growing strong includes the possessing heightened levels of health, education and cultural knowledge. This article focuses on Indigenous fathers and how they understand the importance of sharing cultural activities with their children. We argue that the sharing of Indigenous cultural practices, and the subsequent telling of this narrative, are key enablers for ...

We study the effects of inherited socioeconomic characteristics on markers of unhealthy bodyweight. Taking Australian microdata from 2007 to 2013, we show that approximately 4% of the variation in outcomes is determined by factors beyond an individual's control, such as their race, gender, and social class. Paternal socioeconomic status is the primary explanatory factor, with those born to more affluent fathers slightly less likely to be overweight in adulthood. Decompositions reveal that onl...

We provide an overview of the integration of refugees into the labor markets of a number of high-income countries. Discussing the ways in which refugees and economic migrants are differently selected and so might be expected to perform differently in a host country's labor market, we examine employment and wages for these groups over time after arrival. There is significant heterogeneity between host countries, but in general, refugees experience persistently worse outcomes than other migrant...

Physical activity (PA) participation among youth tends to be insufficient and is prone to decline with age. In Australia, this decline has been shown to particularly occur in the domain of non-organized PA (e.g. active play and informal sport) between childhood and adolescence. However, information about changes in more specific groupings of activities within non-organized PA (i.e. subdomains) is needed, as this could support more targeted intervention strategies. This study aimed to investig...

Driven by the internationally observed phenomenon that poorer children perform worse on standardised tests than their more affluent counterparts, this study attempts to understand the key links between household income and educational outcomes at a system level, through the development of the Parental Income and Child Academic Achievement (PICAA) microsimulation model. This model was developed with the goal of being used by policymakers to test the magnitude of expected outcomes of educationa...

Background: Physical activity is wholistically linked to culture and wellbeing among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (Indigenous peoples in Australia). Correlates of high physical activity among Indigenous children include living in a remote area and low screen time but little is known about determinants of physical activity. Purpose: To examine sociodemographic, parental social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) and sedentary behavior determinants of physical activity among Indigeno...

Emerging evidence suggests that Indigenous children have higher physical activity levels that non-Indigenous children, yet little is known of the factors that influence these levels or how they may be optimized. This study examines correlates of achieving ≥1 hour/day of physical activity among Indigenous Australian children aged 8-13 years. Data were collected through parental self-report in the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children. Proportions of children achieving ≥1 hour/day physical ...

Does monetary policy affect households differently depending on their position on the income distribution? If so, what drives the differences? This paper attempts to answer these questions by decomposing changes in consumption following a monetary policy shock into several direct and indirect channels of transmission. Although direct channels of transmission are the most important in traditional representative agent models, the indirect channels are dominant when households are hete...

Making life better for Indigenous peoples is a global priority. Although bullying and oral health have always been a topic of concern, there is limited information regarding the impact of this problem on the general population, with no evidence in this regard among the Australian Indigenous population. Thus, we aimed to quantify the relationship between bullying victimization and oral health problems by remoteness among 766 Australian Indigenous children aged between 10-15-years using data fr...

In Australia, the Indigenous population disproportionately resides in more remote parts of the country, and a number of outcomes for Indigenous children decline with remoteness. It is widely accepted that inferior housing conditions, notably crowding, contribute to Indigenous disadvantage in remote communities, and this has become a focus of policy despite limited direct empirical evidence. Data from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children are used to analyse children’s outcomes in the ...