Inequality in Education: A Comparison of Australian Indigenous and Nonindigenous Populations

TL;DR

This study analyzes changes in educational achievement and inequality between Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations over several years using Bayesian methods, revealing some improvements but increased inequality over time.

Contribution

It introduces a Bayesian approach to compare educational achievement distributions and inequality between populations over time, highlighting trends and disparities.

Findings

Some improvement in Indigenous educational achievement, especially at lower levels.

Significant increase in educational inequality from 2001 to 2017.

Bayesian analysis provides probabilistic insights into distribution changes.

Abstract

Educational achievement distributions for Australian indigenous and nonindigenous populations in the years 2001, 2006, 2014 and 2017 are considered. Bayesian inference is used to analyse how these ordinal categorical distributions have changed over time and to compare indigenous and nonindigenous distributions. Both the level of educational achievement and inequality in educational achievement are considered. To compare changes in levels over time, as well as inequality between the two populations, first order stochastic dominance and an index of educational poverty are used. To examine changes in inequality over time, two inequality indices and generalised Lorenz dominance are considered. Results are presented in terms of posterior densities for the indices and posterior probabilities for dominance for the dominance comparisons. We find some evidence of improvement over time, especially in the lower parts of the indigenous distribution and that inequality has significantly increased from 2001 to 2017.