Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Bruce Bradbury

@brucebradbury.bsky.social

580 followers 530 following 120 posts

An Australian economist writing on social and economic policy and outcomes. https://www.unsw.edu.au/staff/bruce-bradbury

Videos

Economics 30%

Education 20%

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 10d

This doesn't necessarily mean that older people are less happy. For the average person, they have less life satisfaction as they age. But the most unhappy ones die off - leaving the 'happy' ones behind.

Tamkinat Rauf @tsrauf.bsky.social · 11d

Life satisfaction mostly declines with age. Previous findings (esp. the famous U-shaped age-SWB trajectory) were artifacts of misspecified models. doi.org/10.1093/esr/...

Reposted by Richard McElreath, Samuel L. Perry, Martin Tomko , and 5 more Richard McElreath, Samuel L. Perry, Martin Tomko, Bruce Bradbury, Jill A. Jacobson, Patrick Stokes, Maksym Polyakov, Richard Moorhead

Tamkinat Rauf @tsrauf.bsky.social · 11d

Life satisfaction mostly declines with age. Previous findings (esp. the famous U-shaped age-SWB trajectory) were artifacts of misspecified models. doi.org/10.1093/esr/...

10 52 160

Reposted by Parliamentary Library

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · 15d

Unfinished business: 50 years after Henderson (14 October 2025). Online panel discussion on the trajectory of Australian poverty and policy since Henderson's landmark report. Panellists: Cassandra Goldie, Bruce Bradbury, Kay Cook, Jeremy Poxon www.eventbrite.com.au/e/unfinished...

Unfinished Business: 50 Years After Henderson

An initiative of the Australian Social Policy Association and the Australian Journal of Social Issues, as part of Anti-Poverty Week.

www.eventbrite.com.au

2 1

Reposted by C. Kirabo Jackson, Bruce Bradbury, Ann Bartow , and 1 more C. Kirabo Jackson, Bruce Bradbury, Ann Bartow, Timothy D. McBride

Stephen Nuñez @socio-steve.bsky.social · 15d

At some point people need to learn that the poverty rate is mostly about the safety net or lack thereof and not the economy. The economy was doing historically well, real wages rising for the first time in decades, etc. And poverty rose because pandemic safety policies expired.

Jacobin @jacobinmag.bsky.social · 15d

A new Census Bureau report establishes that poverty increased over the course of the Biden administration.

The data is yet another rebuke to the politicians and commentators who insisted economic conditions under Joe Biden were great.

It’s Official: Poverty Got Worse Under Joe Biden

A new Census Bureau report establishes that poverty increased over the course of the Biden administration. The data is yet another rebuke to the politicians and commentators who insisted economic conditions under Joe Biden were great.

jacobin.com

35 360 1.7K

Reposted by Bruce Bradbury

Aaron Sojourner @aaronsojourner.org · 16d

More evidence, on top of Baby's First Years experiment, that cash alone in early childhood does not improve children's early developmental trajectory.

In contrast, there is strong evidence that policies that improve children's care experiences do improve their early development & adult outcomes.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies @theifs.bsky.social · 16d

Even zooming in on poorer groups who are more likely to see larger income falls due to the policy, we still see no evidence of adverse effects on school readiness.

Chart shows the proportion of third and subsequent children achieving a good level of development by age 5, by date of birth relative to 6 April 2017, for families previously entitled to free school meals and those born in the 20% most deprived areas. Title states: "Children in families already entitled to free school meals or born in the poorest areas also saw no significant impact on school readiness from the two-child limit."

2 4 23

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Sep 2

And, of course: xkcd.com/552/

Correlation

xkcd.com

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Aug 31

"it is horribly bad news for the products of our education system. In order to be productive with AI, they need to obtain skills and experience that appear to come from learning by doing, except that they may not have the opportunities to ‘do.’ Second, wage dispersion is going to increase further"

Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · Aug 30

If AI and workers were strong complements, what would we see?, by @joshgans open.substack.com/pub/joshuaga... Does the latest data tell us AI is a substitute for human work? Nope. Is that comforting? Also nope. My comments on @erikbryn and co. (and @Noahpinion

If AI and workers were strong complements, what would we see?

The answer is pretty much what the initial data is showing

open.substack.com

Reposted by Miles Corak, Aaron Sojourner, Bruce Bradbury

Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · Aug 30

If AI and workers were strong complements, what would we see?

The answer is pretty much what the initial data is showing

open.substack.com

1 10 18

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Aug 30

Crisis in Indonesia: "This is not yet about Prabowo. ... for the time being, this movement has been directed at the parliamentarians and the police."

Erin Cook @erincook.bsky.social · Aug 30

I have tried my very hardest to make this read about Indonesia's last 48 hours as accessible and easy to digest as possible. The goal here is that there is NO assumed knowledge (except for Jokowi, i think I always assume him sorry)
darimulut.substack.com/p/indonesia-...

🇮🇩 Indonesia shakes as protests turn to police violence and death

There's no coming back from this one

darimulut.substack.com

Reposted by Ben Harris‐Roxas, Bruce Bradbury, Catherine J. Frieman , and 1 more Ben Harris‐Roxas, Bruce Bradbury, Catherine J. Frieman, Federica Genovese

Erin Cook @erincook.bsky.social · Aug 30

🇮🇩 Indonesia shakes as protests turn to police violence and death

There's no coming back from this one

darimulut.substack.com

2 84 140

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Aug 28

As an academic, I'm unsure whether my interests most align with those of the publishers of my papers, or with the LLMs. Making a small contribution to the corpus of human knowledge maintained by the LLMs doesn't seem such a bad outcome.

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Aug 27

No, Office automatically inserts en dashes. Typesetters are the ones who typically introduce the em dashes.

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Aug 21

Paul Krugman's substack series on Inequality is now all up on the Stone Center website:
stonecenter.gc.cuny.edu/tag/people-p...
(originally on his substack: paulkrugman.substack.com)

Paul Krugman Archives - Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality

stonecenter.gc.cuny.edu

1 2

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Aug 21

Exactly. There was tendency in policy research to think that longitudinal data would solve all our causal questions. I think (hope?) we are well past this now.

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · Aug 21

It's like an association, but more causal.

This reasoning is very prevalent in psych as well (in particular when it comes to "lagged effects", aka lagged associations, and "within-person associations") which is why we wrote a paper about it:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

These Are Not the Effects You Are Looking for: Causality and the Within-/Between-Persons Distinction in Longitudinal Data Analysis

In psychological science, researchers often pay particular attention to the distinction between within- and between-persons relationships in longitudinal data analysis. Here, we aim to clarify the relationship between the within- and between-persons distinction and causal inference and show that the distinction is informative but does not play a decisive role in causal inference. Our main points are threefold. First, within-persons data are not necessary for causal inference; for example, between-persons experiments can inform about (average) causal effects. Second, within-persons data are not sufficient for causal inference; for example, time-varying confounders can lead to spurious within-persons associations. Finally, despite not being sufficient, within-persons data can be tremendously helpful for causal inference. We provide pointers to help readers navigate the more technical literature on longitudinal models and conclude with a call for more conceptual clarity: Instead of letting statistical models dictate which substantive questions researchers ask, researchers should start with well-defined theoretical estimands, which in turn determine both study design and data analysis.

Reposted by Bruce Bradbury

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · Aug 21

4 17 76

Reposted by Parliamentary Library

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Aug 21

"the Australian government [should] establish an open, transparent and rigorous process to develop an official poverty measurement framework as soon as possible." Our paper in the latest issue of the Australian Economic Review onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14678462...

Fifty Years Beyond the Henderson Inquiry: Rethinking Poverty Measurement for Australia: Australian Economic Review: Vol 58, No S1

Click on the title to browse this issue

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

2 4

Reposted by Aaron Sojourner, Bruce Bradbury

fabolange.bsky.social @fabolange.bsky.social · Aug 20

Looks like #IZA will continue under the umbrella of the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER). Great news

2 16

Reposted by Bruce Bradbury

Michael Klapdor @mklapdor.bsky.social · Aug 19

Record low welfare receipt-amongst working-age Australians = 'generation of slackers' www.aph.gov.au/About_Parlia...

Stacked area chart showing the % of people aged 15-64 in Australia receiving different categories of income support payments from 1978 to 2024. 2023 (12%) and 2024 (13%) had the lowest rates over this period

3 7 17

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Aug 15

"Until we have the resources to properly feed and educate all our children, we shouldn’t worry that we are having too few" @johnquiggin.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/johnquig...

If something can’t go on forever, it will stop

A pessimistic account of the world’s population future offers no good reasons to panic about low birth rates

open.substack.com

2 2

Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Marc Lynch, Ben H. Ansell , and 28 more Joanna Bryson, Marc Lynch, Ben H. Ansell, Adrian Barnett, Richard McElreath, Linda J. Skitka, Zhang, Ingrid Piller, Melissa Terras, Rafael H. M. Pereira, Martin Paul Eve, Justin H. Kirkland, Finland, Martin Tomko, Jason Jones, Ingo Rohlfing, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, Andrew Leyshon, Samuel Bentolila, Samuel Workman, Gordon B. Schmidt, Bruce Bradbury, Michiel van Meeteren, Zen Faulkes, Simon Usherwood, Emmanuel Mourlon‐Druol, Urška Demšar, Hayley Bennett, Eugene McCann, Annalee Newitz, Susan D. Blum

Hannah Shelley, MLIS (Metadata, Lattes & Impostor Syndrome) @hannahshelley.bsky.social · Aug 13

Since search is dead, how soon do you think Google Scholar is headed for the Google Graveyard? I'm betting it's soon, and academia is NOT prepared

Google Scholar Is Doomed

Academia built entire careers on a free Google service with zero guarantees. What could go wrong?

hannahshelley.neocities.org

48 340 720

Reposted by Parliamentary Library

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Aug 6

Australian living cost indices: "Living costs for households whose main source of income is government payments recorded the strongest quarterly rise in living costs". Mainly due to ending of energy rebates. www.abs.gov.au/statistics/e...

Living cost indexes by household type and CPI, Australia, quarterly and annual movements

2 2

Reposted by Bruce Bradbury

Michael Klapdor @mklapdor.bsky.social · Aug 5

Strange article in the Oz claiming DSS incoming gov brief included an 'extraordinary bureaucratic plea to bring welfare under control'. Article focuses on the increase in long-term JobSeeker recipients but suggests this is linked to concerns over spending www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/polit...

Screenshot of chart included in the article in The Australian showing the number of people on JobSeeker for more than 10 years - total number and as % of JobSeeker recipients

3 6 19

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Aug 3

Na. That's success!

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Jul 31

"Fearful of losing control of any scrap of virtue, managers needed to relentless check on every little task."

Hannah Forsyth 🍉 @hannahforsyth.bsky.social · Jul 31

Systems not people: why did it all go so wrong?

open.substack.com/pub/hannahfo...

Moral Deskilling: why you spend more time on admin than your actual job

There *is* good and bad bureaucracy. And the bad kind is about managerial class power.

open.substack.com

Reposted by Bruce Bradbury

Hannah Forsyth 🍉 @hannahforsyth.bsky.social · Jul 31

Systems not people: why did it all go so wrong?

open.substack.com/pub/hannahfo...

Moral Deskilling: why you spend more time on admin than your actual job

There *is* good and bad bureaucracy. And the bad kind is about managerial class power.

open.substack.com

7 6

Reposted by Bruce Bradbury, Simon Wiederhold

John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · Jul 31

Wow.

Research findings with p-values marginally less than 0.05 attract 60 to 110% higher Altmetric scores than those with p-values marginally above 0.05.

p-hacking means more popular attention!

p-hacking FTW!

5 18 60

Reposted by Parliamentary Library

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Jul 29

The first is relevant to the base rate of payment, and the second to the income test. Changing norms around the second, suggest we should loosen the partner income test.

1 2

Reposted by Parliamentary Library

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Jul 29

These arguments also apply to other income support payments. Note there are two independent principles involved. Couples have lower per-person costs than singles (eg share a bedroom). Couples should support each other financially. /2

1 1 1

Reposted by Brian Schaffner, Calvin K. Lai, Erika Franklin Fowler , and 4 more Brian Schaffner, Calvin K. Lai, Erika Franklin Fowler, Bruce Bradbury, Jon Dean, Maik Arnold, Beatriz Goulão

Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · Mar 20

I’ve long used FiveThirtyEight’s interactive “Hack Your Way To Scientific Glory” to illustrate the idea of p-hacking when I teach statistics. But ABC/Disney killed the site earlier this month :(

So I made my own with #rstats and Observable and #QuartoPub ! stats.andrewheiss.com/hack-your-way/

Screenshot of the linked Quarto website, with input checkboxes to change different conditions for a regression model that predicts economic performance based on US political party, with a reported p-value

58 440 1.5K

Bruce Bradbury @brucebradbury.bsky.social · Jul 24

This can be particularly pernicious in SAS (and maybe other languages with implicit loops over cases and where variables are retained to facilitate file merges). When doing 1:n merges, code like amount=amount/100 can lead to very unexpected results.