Comments

Dear Justine, Thank you very much for your comment. On religion, as noted in my comment below, you may well be right on this (in the case of government ODA at least one other study finds frequent service attendees are more supportive, even if the religious as a whole are not.) Unfortunately, the census data we use don't provide us with information on frequency of of attendance. This is a matter we hope to study more in the future. On the education effect. Because we ran regressions controlling for income, we know education's impact is not via income. However the other suggestions you make are very interesting and definitely worthy of further investigation. We will try our best to do this as we take the research forwards. Thank you for your input. Terence

Interesting although not surprising findings – consistent conclusion from all research on who gives and why is that giving is largely emotive, personal and a reflection of ones values. Regarding religion, other research I've encountered cites that the more often someone attends religious services the more likely they are to donate to charity and donate larger amounts, so attendance at services would appear to be more a predictive factor than identification. Potential explanations for the relationship with education includes: association with higher incomes; education draws people into memberships/communities of participation (e.g. professional associations, alumni) that can then bring about higher levels of solicitation; greater comprehension of social issues and needs.

A good read, thank you, about very complex issues. To assist with clear analysis of the issues, I think it is probably best to separate hunger and under-nutrition out from the malnutrition associated with obesity. While essentially about food, and so similar in some areas, overall I think the required responses are mostly different, although I would love to engage in a discussion about this. Ultimately, the policies required need to be multi-sectoral and multi-level, which your recommendations highlight. At least for obesity ( and NCDs in general), the issue is about making the healthy choice the easy choice, which I believe happens through a combination of education and individual/family support, efforts to create or reinforce societal norms that support health-conducive behaviours and establishing structures that incentivise people. Individual-level interventions alone do not work, as we have seen through smoking prevention and cessation efforts, and action to address issues such as drunk-driving and ending violence against women. I agree with you that these issues need much more attention, particularly because they are difficult to sustainably address. At the very least, hunger alone requires no further justification for action and should be of the highest priority for funding. Hunger is a basic biological signal that the body is not getting the nutrition it needs to function and ultimately survive - justification enough for action.

Thanks Ben, in the interests of fairness I should note that Jono wrote most of the summary. You're right the religion finding is slightly puzzling. Note though, that it's not just there for ODA but also for donations to NGOS. (Your explanation of ODA vs private donations on the other hand is, I think, very plausible for why we find a negative Coalition effect on support for ODA but not on NGO donations). Possible explanations for the negative religious finding are: 1. Problems of ecological inference (a technical issue - discussed in the working paper, probably an unlikely explanation). 2. (For NGO donations) religious people giving in other ways (i.e. through tithes) rather than individual donations to ACFID members). 3. (For ODA) a certain type of religious person filling out the vote compas form in much higher numbers (and the difference being one not accounted for by weighting, which is unlikely). 4. The fact that our measure of religiosity is simply proportion of the electorate who told the census enumerator they were religious (all we could do with our data; although, note, we also got the same result when we replaced 'religious' with 'christian'). Other work has found, for example, that frequent attenders of religious worship are more supportive of aid. So perhaps our result is being driven by the only-nominally-religious. 5. Some other data issue I haven't thought of. That said, the result seems pretty robust. So I think it's real (even if I'm not yet certain). Like you I want to see a lot more testing, which is exactly what we hope to do in future work. Thanks for your comment.

Hi Mose, I'm glad my research is of use to you! And I hope it continues to be in the future, along with all of Devpolicy's Pacific focused work. Regards, Jonathan

Hi Anna, It is up to each respondent of the census to identify their own ancestry. 'Australian South Sea Islanders' is not identified as a variable in the census data so they may have identified as either Australian or ni-Vanuatu/Solomon Islander. Unfortunately it's impossible to be more precise. Regards, Jonathan

Very interesting findings and great summary thanks Terence. It seems strange that religiosity has a negative impact on support for ODA. I would have thought the inverse to be true. Could it be that those who most closely align with a religion give more through their own charitable donations but don't share the same positive view of ODA? Look forward to future research that might explain this result.

Very useful to have this statistical analysis of Pacific Islanders in Australia. For the ancestry data, how are ASSI descendants from Vanuatu and Sols counted?

Many thanks for sharing these stats on the status and trend of Pacific Islanders in Australia. This information is very important to people like me providing advices to government in terms of policy options for economic development. Much appreciated Mose CTA, Office of the Prime Minister & Cabinet Honiara

Dear Jo, This is really good research and a compelling exposition of the many factors that fuel violence against women in Papua New Guinea. I would encourage all Devpolicy blog readers to follow the links and read Jo's paper in full. All Australian foreign ministers are briefed by staff from the former AusAID on this issue but none have persistently raised it in bilateral discussions. Somehow, other matters are always front and centre and violence against women is not seen as important enough to be a prominent agenda item. I am hopeful that Minister Bishop will take up this matter with more vigour and persistence, given her commitment to empowerment of women as a focus for the aid program -- as Jo's research shows, violence against women affects and is affected by a raft of social and economic issues in Papua New Guinea, and is not something that should be shunted sideways as a women's matter. Thank you Jo Margaret

Great comments Grant. I would only add that in the <a href="http://aid.dfat.gov.au/countries/Documents/outcome_lawjustice_schedule.pdf" rel="nofollow">PNG-Australia Law and Justice Partnership for Development</a> [pdf] one of the four "headline results" against which progress will be measured is PNG's "enhanced ability to prevent and combat corruption." (see Annex 2). Abolishing Taskforce Sweep clearly takes the country in the opposite direction. So, if we are serious about mutual accountability in our aid program, there need to be repercussions.

For the latest on the decaying institution which is UPNG, try the official website or rather the message to what was once the official website accessed today.: This account has been Suspended or Closed Please contact your web hosting provider for more information. As pointed out in my earlier comment, the newly appointed VC once promised that fixing the website would be his first priority. Certainly it has been fixed though this may not have been what he meant, or do anything to assist enquiries to the university or internal communications. While having wifi may be an improvement for some individuals, I doubt that it has done much to improve the `push factors' behind academic turnover which Bernard Yegiora identified two days ago. Defending the indefensible or tinkering with minor aspects of reform are no longer appropriate: UPNG needs a major comprehensive transformation by an international consortium, as drives so much at USP, if it is to adequately serve the country and the region, as well as wider labour markets.