The economics of Aboriginal education
This paper analyses broad patterns in Australian Aboriginal affairs and indigenous education since colonisation. The influence of these patterns on educational initiatives over the last 20 years is explored in some detail. Discussion highlights the level of systemic bias and structural violence which continue to influence Aboriginal life chances and, by extension, educational achievement among indigenous Australians despite state and federal policies designed to enhance educational access and equity. Of particular concern is that such policies are not closely integrated with community development and appear to continue to press for assimilation rather than self‐determination. As such, indigenous education appears to intensify levels of systemic frustration in Aboriginal communities. These issues are illustrated by an analysis of educational attainments among Aboriginal students in relation to those of other Australians and government expenditure.
Structural Violence at the World Level: Diachronic Findings
Previous cross-national studies have shown that life expectancy is linked to GNP per capita. Indeed, an earlier paper by the authors of this paper postulated an economic law of life: for every increase of GNP per capita of 7.7 % in the poor nations of the world there is an increase of one year in life expectancy, on the average. Using energy consumption per capita data for 26 poor nations for two different time periods, the authors confirm that this 'law of life' applies over time as well as across nations: for every increase of energy consumption per capita of 7.2 % there is an increase of one year in life expectancy, on the average. For rich nations there is a discrepancy between the synchronic and diachronic analyses. Across nations, wealth is not significantly associated with life expectancy, while across time, wealth is significantly associated with life expectancy, an 18.1 % increase in wealth pro ducing a one year increase in life expectancy.
The Demography of Structural Violence
The distribution of a society's resources affects not only the standard of living, but the chances of survival itself. A more equal distribution will normally increase the average length of life in society as a whole. The loss of life from an unequal distribution is an as pect of structural violence: violence inherent in the social order. We here develop measures of structural violence based on the potential increase in life expectancy, and show how they are related to the annual number of deaths and total death rates. One main result is the equality between the percentage loss of life years, and the percentage of deaths due to struc tural violence, when the population is in stationary equilibrium. A cohort approach is used to investigate structural violence over time. Methods for dealing with empirical, non-stationary populations are also developed. The amount of structural vio lence in the global society is calculated as an example, and compared with Köhler and Al cock's work. We find, for 1970, a potential life expectancy of 72 years, while the actual value was 53 years. The index of structural violence (ISV), which measures the intensity, is .26; and the quantity of structural violence (QSV), which corresponds to the number of dead, equals 18 million annual deaths from structural violence.