http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/health/research-row-race-discrimination-more-harmful-than-smoking/news-story/1df14303d5d1d455ef0edb8157c4b243
Research, by Amanuel Elias from the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation
Research row: race discrimination more harmful than smoking
THE AUSTRALIAN APRIL 5, 2016
Nicola Berkovic
Legal affairs correspondent
Sydney
Controversial research funded by the Australian Human Rights Commission and VicHealth has made the extraordinary claim that racial discrimination drains $44.9 billion a year from the economy and is a bigger health cost than smoking.
The research, by Amanuel Elias from the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, has for the first time tried to put a dollar figure on the health impacts of racial discrimination, concluding that the cost is 3.6 per cent of GDP a year over a 10-year period.
The study’s methodologies were questioned by economists and attacked by Institute of Public Affairs executive director John Roskam as a “political agenda masquerading as academic research” that was “attempting to shut down freedom of speech”.
The study attempted to calculate the public health costs of exposure to racial discrimination, including mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
VicHealth contributed $75,000 and the Australian Human Rights Commission $20,000 towards the research, which was part of a larger project. Federal Liberal MP Michael Sukkar, who represents the Victorian seat of Deakin, questioned why taxpayer dollars had been spent researching the costs of discrimination given Australians were already opposed to it and “unified in the objective of stamping it out”.
“Given that everybody deplores racial discrimination, I’m not sure spending taxpayer dollars researching its costs should be a priority when we are running massive deficits,” Mr Sukkar said.
Dr Elias found that one in five Australians experienced racism and sought to estimate the cost of the “pain and suffering” involved.
“Once we know what racial discrimination costs society, we have a strong information base from which to launch an economic argument for making a reasonable effort to reduce racial discrimination,” he said.
He found that 285,228 years were lost from healthy lives every year as a result of exposure to racial discrimination — eclipsing the 204,788 years estimated to be lost due to smoking.
University of Queensland professor of health economics Paul Frijters, who conducted a highly publicised study of racism among Queensland bus drivers, said the pattern of victims and perpetrators found in Dr Elias’s study did “not really tally” with other studies of racism in Australia. “The authors seem to have a very wide definition for labelling things as experiences of racism and of being prejudiced, which unsurprisingly led to their very high estimates of the costs of racism,” he said.
Professor Frijters said that while he agreed that discrimination and racism existed in Australia and did involve serious health costs, more work was needed to analyse what those costs were and to “narrow down a more believable number”.
But Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane welcomed the research, saying: “We know there is a human cost to racism in our society. Now we know something about the economic cost of it. This research will have an important impact on public understanding about racial prejudice and discrimination.’’
RMIT University economics professor Sinclair Davidson, who is a senior research fellow at the IPA, said he believed the study’s estimate that one in five Australians experienced racial discrimination was “probably too big”.
“I think certainly the results need to be treated with a lot of caution,” he said. “There probably is discrimination, it almost certainly costs the Australian community money. But I’m a bit worried these numbers are too big.”
Dr Elias agreed that the costs involved were “extraordinary” but said he had used established methods in health economics to convert the healthy years of life lost into dollar values. Dr Elias, who arrived in Australia from Eritrea in 2010, said he had not personally experienced racism in Australia. He said free speech “should not impact on the health of other people”.
Mr Roskam said the research was “absolutely ridiculous” and “delegitimised” real health risks and medical problems. “This is a political agenda masquerading as academic research with numbers that are frankly plucked out of the air,” he said.
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*Amanuel Elias
Measuring the Economic Consequences of Racial Discrimination
Biography
Amanuel has received Masters degree (in economics from Monash University) and BA (in economics from Asmara University). Amanuel holds a post-doctoral position working as an associate research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. His research interests include: analysis of empirical and measurement issues related to the economics of racial discrimination, the labour market outcomes for minority groups, the economic impacts of racism/racial discrimination, the economic impact of cultural diversity, and income inequality and disparity, and the labour market performance of immigrants.
Qualifications
-Bachelor of Economics, Asmara University
-Masers in Economics, Monash University
Affiliations
-Development and Human Rights Research Stream
-Diversity and Identity Research Stream
Received on Tue Apr 05 2016 - 10:39:53 EDT