Few books have had the global impact of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. An overnight bestseller, Piketty’s assessment that inherited wealth will always grow faster, on average, than earned wealth has energised debate. Hailed as ‘bigger than Marx’ (The Economist) or dismissed as ‘medieval’ (Wall Street Journal), the book is widely acknowledged as having significant economic and political implications. Collected in this BWB Text are responses to this phenomenon from a diverse range of New Zealand economists and commentators. These voices speak independently to the relevance of Piketty’s conclusions. Is New Zealand faced with a one-way future of rising inequality? Does redistribution need to focus more on wealth, rather than just income? Was the post-war Great Convergence merely an aberration and is our society doomed to regress into a new Gilded Age?

"Competent children is a longitudinal project [covering 298 children in the Wellington region] ... This report covers the second phase, when the children were aged 6, at the end of their first year at school, and it compares the data for age 5 with the data for age 6"--Executive summary.

This study examined the workloads of academic, general, support, library, and technical staff of New Zealand universities. It focused on current levels of workload, changes in workload levels and content, connections between workload and stress, and staff attitudes towards the effects of workload changes and educational reforms on the quality of their work. A total of 1,181 Association of University Staff members were surveyed through mailed questionnaires. The findings showed increasing workloads and stress for many university staff, and suggest that the overall quality of working life is declining for many university staff. Many of those surveyed felt that their work was often or always stressful; the majority stated that their work had become more stressful recently, and that they saw this trend continuing in the future. One of the major factors involved in the increase in stress levels was increase in workload. Females and recently appointed academics were identified as more likely to experience stress compared with academics in general. Two appendixes provide demographic information about the respondents, additional data tables, and copies of the academic and administrative support personnel questionnaires. (Contains 33 references.) (MDM)

This report is the fourth from the Competent Children project that is following a sample of children in the Wellington region of New Zealand from their early education experience into adulthood. The main aim of the project is to chart the contributions to children's progress made by family resources, early childhood education, school experiences, children's interests and activities in the home or outside school, and peer relationships. This report describes the children's progress and lives at the age of 10 years in 10 areas of knowledge, skill, and dispositions: (1) literacy; (2) mathematics; (3) communication; (4) perseverance; (5) social skills with peers; (6) social skills with adults; (7) individual responsibility; (8) logical problem solving; (9) curiosity; and (10) fine motor skills. Among the main findings were that most children were comfortable in their school environment, were good at making and keeping friends, needed adult intervention to work with other children over a period of time, and had progressed in reading and problem solving. Children starting school with low competency were more likely to improve if their parents were highly educated or if their family had a high income, while high-achieving students maintained their achievement level. Other factors considered as possible contributions to children's performance were early childhood education experience, school experiences (school and class characteristics, teacher perspectives, school attitudes, communication with parents about school, school attendance and mobility), gender, having English as a first language, family resources/characteristics (family type and stability, income source, parental employment, ethnicity, family income, parent education), and children's interests and activities (academic-related, leisure). The report's conclusion notes that adult responsiveness to children, warmth, fairness, and the inclusion of some cognitive content in the interaction ensured supportive interactions between children and the adults in their lives. The report's five appendices include descriptions of data analysis and results as well as a discussion of the selection of a statistical model for the study. (Contains 51 references.) (KB)

Competent Children, Competent Learners is a longitudinal study which began in 1993 and follows the progress of a sample of around 500 New Zealand young people from early childhood education through schooling and beyond. The transition to secondary school was focussed on during the previous phase of the study when students were aged 14 (refer Cathy Wylie, Edith Hodgen and Hilary Ferral, 2006). This report provides follow-up analysis of any statistical effects of the transition to secondary school evident at age 16 on students' engagement and achievement.

Competent Children, Competent Learners is a longitudinal study which began in 1993 and follows the progress of a sample of around 500 New Zealand young people from early childhood education through schooling and beyond. This is the main report from the age-16 phase of the study and details students' participation in school, their experiences of learning, and their achievement in terms of the study's competency measures and their NCEA results. It also describes overall patterns of family life, friendships and interests out of school at age 16.