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The ‘Gap Year’ in Australia: Incidence, Participant Characteristics and Outcomes
Author(s) -
Curtis David D.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
australian economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-8462
pISSN - 0004-9018
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8462.12054
Subject(s) - allowance (engineering) , incidence (geometry) , metropolitan area , demographic economics , psychology , generation gap , gender gap , demography , political science , geography , sociology , economics , operations management , mathematics , geometry , archaeology , law
I report on the incidence of gap‐taking—a year between secondary school and university—and find it has increased from about 10 per cent to almost 25 per cent of recent school‐leaver university entrants. Gap‐takers have lower school achievement scores than direct entrants. Non‐metropolitan students are much more likely to take a gap year. I investigate evidence that gap‐takers work in order to access the Youth Allowance benefit. Finally, I compare the course and career progression of gap‐takers and non‐gappers .