Racism in Australia
The Economic Cost of Racism in Australia
Investigators
| Dr Yin Paradies (CI) | Centre for Health & Society, School of Population Health |
| Mr Loga Chandrakumar | McCaughey Centre, School of Population Health |
| Dr Marion Frere | McCaughey Centre, School of Population Health |
| Dr Margaret Kelahar | Centre for Health Policy, Program and Economics, School of Population Health |
| Professor Ian McDonald | Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics & Commerce |
Summary
There is increasing recognition that ethnoracial discrimination (racism) has serious health, social and economic consequences. While the cost of social problems such as domestic violence, obesity and depression have been measured, there exists no modelling quantifying the economic cost of racism to society as a whole. Given the Federal Government’s focus on enhancing productivity, economic growth and lifting workforce participation, this proposed research will help build an economic case for combating racism. There are a number of well-developed methodologies for modelling the financial costs of social phenomenon. This project, if developed into an ARC-linkage grant application, will also involve an economic evaluation of a VicHealth intervention that will be the first of its kind in the world to use multiple and interdisciplinary approaches to address both interpersonal and local-level institutional racism across a range of sectors in a local region in Victoria. It is proposed that an economic evaluation be added to the process and outcome evaluation of this trial. Combined with research on the costs of racism, such an evaluation will allow a cost-benefit analysis of anti-racism interventions in Australia. This research is also timely as it has the potential to influence the Government’s social inclusion and Indigenous policy agendas, which to date have lacked an explicit anti-racism element.
This application is for seed funding to further develop and scope an ARC Linkage application in conjunction with VicHealth and other appropriate industry partners to explore: (1) the availability, quality and analysis of data on the prevalence of racism in Australia, its health and other social effects; (2) the costs of racism to Australia; and (3) the cost of addressing racism in Australia.