Dr Francisco Azpitarte

  • Senior Lecturer in Social Policy

Francisco has a strong interest in the analysis of poverty and inequality and the role of Social Policy in addressing those issues. Before joining the School in 2018, he held the Ronald Henderson Research Fellow position at the University of Melbourne and the Brotherhood of St Laurence.

The main motivation of Francisco's research is to improve our understanding of the causes and consequences of poverty and inequality and to build translatable knowledge to inform social policy to address them. He is particularly interested in understanding the impact of poverty on child development and the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage; and the role of social policy in reducing poverty and promoting opportunities over the life-cycle to allow families to break the cycle of disadvantage. Francisco firmly believes in the value of bringing insights from different disciplines to build knowledge on socioeconomic inequalities and disadvantage. This is reflected in his research agenda which comprises collaborative projects with researchers from a wide range of disciplines including Sociology, Education, Psychology, and Neuropsychiatry.

Francisco teaches on a range of modules at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities focused on Inequality, Social Policy and Research Methods.

  • Azpitarte, F., Chigavazira, A., Kalb, G. R., Farrant, B., Perales, F., & Zubrick, S. R. (2018)  “Childcare use and its role in Indigenous child development: Evidence from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children in Australia”, The Economic Record, Vol.95 (308), pp.1-33.
  • Simmons, J. G., Azpitarte, F., Roost, F. D., Dommers, E., Allen, N. B., Havighurst, S., & Haslam, N. (2019). Correlates of hair cortisol concentrations in disadvantaged young children. Stress and Health35(1), 104-111. 
  • Goldfeld S., O'Connor M., O'Connor E., Chong S., Badland H., Woolfenden S., Redmond G., Williams K., Azpitarte F., Cloney D., Mensah F. (2018) ‘More than a snapshot in time: pathways of disadvantage over childhood’, International Journal of Epidemiology, DOI: 10.1093/ije/dyy086.
  • Van de Ven, J., Herault, N., and Azpitarte, F. (2017) ‘Identifying Tax-Implicit Equivalence Scales’, Journal of Economic Inequality, 15(3) pp. 257-275.
  • Herault, N. and Azpitarte, F. (2016). ‘Understanding Changes in the Distribution and Redistribution of Income: A Unifying Decomposition Framework’, Review of Income and Wealth 62(2), pp. 266-282. [link]
  • Azpitarte, F (2014). ‘Has Economic Growth in Australia Been Good for the Income Poor? and for the Multidimensionally Poor?’, Social Indicators Research, Vol. 117, N. 3, pp. 871-905. [link]
  • Azpitarte, F. (2012).  ‘Measuring Poverty using both Income and Wealth: a Cross-Country Comparison between the U.S. and Spain’, Review of Income and Wealth, Vol. 58, no. 1, pp. 24-50.
  • Azpitarte, F. (2011). ‘Measurement and Identification of Asset-Poor Households: a Cross-National Comparison between Spain and the United Kingdom’, Journal of Economic Inequality, Vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 87-110.