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James Mahmud Rice

@jamesmahmudrice.info

Sociologist in the Demography And Ageing Unit, Melbourne School Of Population And Global Health, University Of Melbourne www.jamesmahmudrice.info

Posts Replies Media

James Mahmud Rice @jamesmahmudrice.info · 16/10/2026

Recently the "dark academia" aesthetic caught my attention. With respect to fashion, dark academia appears to favour a colour palette of browns, beige, greys, white, and black (as well as green, burgundy, and navy). This reminded me of the subject of an earlier post: the yellow-footed rock-wallaby.

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James Mahmud Rice @jamesmahmudrice.info · 30/06/2026

Policy Dialogue on Intergenerational Equity 20 July 2026, Australian National University, Canberra I'll be speaking at this policy dialogue, along with many other interesting speakers. For more detail on the event and the speakers, see: www.cepar.edu.au/event/policy...

Title slide for James Mahmud Rice's presentation "Intergenerational Inequality in Living Standards: Findings from the Australian National Transfer Accounts".

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James Mahmud Rice @jamesmahmudrice.info · 30/10/2025

Here is a figure which includes children, taken from Rice et al, "Intergenerational inequality and the intergenerational state", 2021: doi.org/10.1007/s125... rdcu.be/cylFh (full-text, view-only)

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James Mahmud Rice @jamesmahmudrice.info · 30/10/2025

This figure is misleading. Notice how the chart does not include children, even though, as the article states: "People receive benefits from the state as a child. They attend childcare paid for by government subsidies and they get a free (public) or subsidised (private) education."

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James Mahmud Rice @jamesmahmudrice.info · 06/08/2025

10 beautiful libraries, including the State Library Of South Australia and State Library Victoria: www.1000libraries.com/post/2025-to...

La Trobe Reading Room, State Library Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, as viewed from the 5th floor.

Photo by David Iliff. License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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James Mahmud Rice @jamesmahmudrice.info · 18/05/2025

I've been having a fun time browsing through @chrispower.bsky.social's brief survey of the short story: www.theguardian.com/books/series... And, happily, the following books by Machado de Assis and Nabokov (both included in the survey) arrived in the post on Friday, just in time for the weekend!

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis

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James Mahmud Rice @jamesmahmudrice.info · 17/05/2025

ANU study: "Australians over the age of 60 have enjoyed a post-tax income similar to that of mid-career working age Australians" Study's findings on post-tax income, 2018/19-2022/23: Mid-career working age Australians: $125K Australians over 60: less than this Australians over 75: $100K (20% less)

Figure 2 in the ANU study, which describes average real income per person after taxes and transfers by age for various years between 1993/94 and 2022/23.

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James Mahmud Rice @jamesmahmudrice.info · 15/05/2025

Here is the figure from Varela et al. I assume the vertical axis should read "transfer payments minus taxes". The figure does not cover the entire life cycle, because public transfers received by children (like school education) are grouped together with those received by their working-age parents.

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James Mahmud Rice @jamesmahmudrice.info · 15/05/2025

Both papers include a figure that describes net public transfers (public transfers net of taxes) across the life cycle, where this difference can be seen. Here is the figure from Rice et al.

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James Mahmud Rice @jamesmahmudrice.info · 14/03/2025

In his book "Dimensions Of Urban Social Structure" (University Of Toronto Press, 1969), Frank Lancaster Jones makes some interesting observations on the value of social research that "states the obvious" or produces "commonsense" results rather than surprising ones:

"Surprise may be the essence of mystery stories and science fiction but it is not the test of fruitful and important sociological research. Indeed, I do not know how one could surprise the common sense that affirms on the one hand that 'Too many cooks spoil the broth', but on the other that 'Many hands make light work'; that advises 'Penny wise, pound foolish', yet warns 'Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves'. Common sense in fact is little more than a treasure-trove of mutually contradictory statements in terms of which any social event or human experience can find a reassuring interpretation. While I would never presume to steal a march upon common sense, it is obviously worthwhile to investigate the conditions under which one segment of common sense may be more applicable than another."

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James Mahmud Rice @jamesmahmudrice.info · 06/02/2025

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