Principal Research Fellow
Contact Information
Phone: +61 2 6201 2769
Fax: +61 2 6201 2751
Email: robert.tanton@natsem.canberra.edu.au
Postal Address: NATSEM, University of Canberra, ACT, 2601
Qualifications:
- Masters in Philosophy (Statistics), Australian National University
- Bachelor degree in Economics, University of Wollongong
- Opportunity and Disadvantage: Differences in wellbeing among Australia’s Adults and Children at a small area level (DP0664429)
- HOUSEMOD
- Child Social Exclusion
- SPATIALMSM
Social exclusion, disadvantage and poverty, Housing stress and disadvantage, Spatial microsimulation, Statistical analysis of social data.
Profile:
Robert’s main interest is social exclusion, and he leads the team at NATSEM doing research on social exclusion. This covers areas such as housing disadvantage, economic disadvantage (poverty), and income inequality. Recent work from his team includes Child Social Exclusion indexes; estimates of housing stress used by the Prime Minister; and estimates of housing affordability and housing stress used in an AMP/NATSEM report.
Robert’s team also uses a spatial microsimulation technique to derive small area estimates of many variables measuring social exclusion. So far, this technique has been used to derive small area estimates of poverty and housing stress. Robert’s team is one of only a few international teams involved in this world leading research.
Robert has presented results of his work to a number of national and international conferences, and presented results from his research on housing stress to the Senate Select Committee on Housing Affordability.
Previous to joining NATSEM, Robert worked in the Australian Public Service, with five years at the Department of Finance researching and modelling staffing statistics; five years at the Commonwealth Grants Commission modelling police expenditure; and six years at the Australian Bureau of Statistics modelling crime rates and leading the team calculating the ABS 2001 SEIFA indexes.
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