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This paper compares the monetary and living standards approaches to poverty using Australian data for the period 2006–2017. The aim is to highlight the conceptual and empirical strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches and identify the similarities and differences that emerge when both are applied to examine what happened over the period and to a limited degree, why. The acknowledged limitations of estimating poverty rates by comparing household income with a poverty line have to a degree been addressed by developments in deprivation research that have generated estimates that are more directly related to living standards, more democratic and more credible. But this approach also has limitations, so its growing popularity need not signify the end of poverty line studies. This paper compares the two approaches, with specific attention paid to ensuring that the estimates are internally consistent over time and comparable at a point in time. Both show a consistent pattern of modest improvement in social disadvantage over the period examined, but they reveal different aspects of change. The monetary approach highlights the role of housing costs in driving changes in poverty, while the more nuanced explanation generated by estimates of deprivation provides detailed insights. The results suggest that each has a positive role to play in better understanding the nature of poverty and identifying the factors driving change over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constructs a multi-dimensional individual well-being (MIW) indicator framework to explicitly recognise the inter-relationship between economic and non-economic dimensions in encapsulating the totality of an individual's life. The MIW framework treats individual well-being as a multi-dimensional concept disaggregable into uniquely defined but latent well-being dimensions with observable indicators attached to each. A composite well-being index applicable to individual level analysis is developed through a series of intra-personal aggregative procedures. The results are based on person-level data from the household, income and labour dynamics in Australia survey and applied to an assessment of the individual well-being of older Australians, aged 65 years and over. The findings indicate that, although older Australians have slightly lower overall well-being compared to non-older adults, driven primarily by declining physical health and to a lesser extent mental health, they maintain strong personal relationships, and engage actively in their communities. More generally, the approach outlines how to quantify objective multi-dimensional assessments of individual well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]