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Philip S Morrison

Victoria University of Wellington, Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, Faculty Member

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Philip Morrison is Professor of Human Geography at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He holds degrees from the University of Toronto and Victoria University of Wellington (VUW). He undertakes research into economic geography, labour and housing markets, inequality and subjective wellbeing. He also undertakes research into rural development in Sarawak, Malaysia.

Philip has been an Urban Studies Fellow at the Centre for Urban Studies, University of Glasgow, Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge and the University of Melbourne and the University of Toronto, Institute of Southeast Asia Studies (ISEAS), and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), University of Queensland among others.

He has held the Henry Lang Fellowship at the Institute of Policy Studies, VUW, and the Hodge Fellowship, Social Science Research Fund Committee and a Development Fellowship from the Association of Commonwealth Universities.

He was awarded the Distinguished Geographer Medal by the New Zealand Geographical Society in 2013.

For further details see: http://www.victoria.ac.nz/sgees/about/staff/philip-morrison

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Papers by Philip S Morrison

Residential sorting and social mobility in New Zealand

Policy Quarterly, 2011

This article argues that the residential sorting process which confers advantages on those who ca... more This article argues that the residential sorting process which confers advantages on those who can choose their residential environments may also deny such advantages to others. The policy question therefore is the degree to which residing in neighbourhoods with relatively high levels of deprivation lowers people’s prospects of social mobility.

Well-being and ill-being on campus

Enquiries into the low mental health of university students are exposing the relative merits of c... more Enquiries into the low mental health of university students are exposing the relative merits of competing theoretical and empirical models. The debate is important because the models used to characterise the problem imply alternative causations, consequences, and possible interventions. The purpose of our study is to highlight the value of recognising the presence of both well-being and ill-being within individual students (the dual continua model) as opposed to viewing their well-being and ill-being as opposite ends of a single continuum of mental health (the bipolar model). Using a baseline survey completed by 1,581 first year undergraduate students who enrolled in a New Zealand university at the beginning of 2019, we document the inverse correlation between their scores on the WHO-5 measure of psychological well-being and the PHQ-9 measure of psychological distress or ill-being. Contrary to the assumption of the bipolar model we find their inverse correlation is not strong and that many students are located off the diagonal, some reporting both high well-being and high ill-being over the two-week reference period and many more recording low scores on both screening instruments. We represent this heterogeneity in terms of six clusters of students based on a latent profile analysis of their two scores. We also find that students' well-being and ill-being respond differently to variations in their physical and financial health both in cross-section and over time, confirming that well-being and ill-being can also be functionally independent. The results are important both diagnostically and in terms of the interventions they suggest.

Aversion to Local Wellbeing Inequality is Moderated by Social Engagement and Sense of Community

Our subjective wellbeing is a mix of our personal and community wellbeing. One indication of thei... more Our subjective wellbeing is a mix of our personal and community wellbeing. One indication of their close relationship is the strong negative correlation between our own subjective wellbeing and the degree of subjective wellbeing inequality within our community. This negative relationship reflects our innate and socialized inequality aversion and holds regardless of whether the group is large as in the case of countries or small in the case of local neighbourhoods. While the country case has been well documented in the subjective wellbeing literature, the relationship between the local community distribution of subjective wellbeing and individual subjective wellbeing has received little attention. In this paper we demonstrate the sensitivity of individual life satisfaction to the distribution of life satisfaction within electoral wards in urban New Zealand and explore several possible behavioural drivers. We find that having social support and feeling a sense of community both reduce the negative effects of local subjective wellbeing inequality, while being less socially engaged exaggerates them. Our results highlight the potential that programmes aimed at reducing wellbeing inequalities within local communities might play in raising individual as well as average wellbeing.

Wellbeing Heterogeneity within and Among University Students

The widespread international concern over the low average wellbeing of university students shows ... more The widespread international concern over the low average wellbeing of university students shows no sign of abating. Neglected in the debate is a recognition that wellbeing itself is multidimensional and not all components respond in the same way to external and internal pressures. We draw on a large sample survey of first year students who enrolled in a New Zealand university in 2019 and measure their wellbeing using the WHO-5 measuring instrument. Instead of modelling the index itself we address its five individual components. We apply the marginal (populationaverages) model using the generalised estimating equation (GEE) method. As well as confirming earlier findings that students with poorer physical health and lower financial capacity experience lower levels of wellbeing, we document their uneven influence on the relative frequency with which the five individual components are experienced: being cheerful, calm, active, fresh and interested over the previous two teaching weeks.

Wellbeing Heterogeneity within and Among University Students

Applied Research in Quality of Life

The widespread international concern over the low average wellbeing of university students shows ... more The widespread international concern over the low average wellbeing of university students shows no sign of abating. Neglected in the debate is a recognition that wellbeing itself is multidimensional and not all components respond in the same way to external and internal pressures. We draw on a large sample survey of first year students who enrolled in a New Zealand university in 2019 and measure their wellbeing using the WHO-5 measuring instrument. Instead of modelling the index itself we address its five individual components. We apply the marginal (population-averages) model using the generalised estimating equation (GEE) method. As well as confirming earlier findings that students with poorer physical health and lower financial capacity experience lower levels of wellbeing, we document their uneven influence on the relative frequency with which the five individual components are experienced: being cheerful, calm, active, fresh and interested over the previous two teaching weeks.

Aversion to Local Wellbeing Inequality is Moderated by Social Engagement and Sense of Community

Social Indicators Research, 2021

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more

The inequality debate: the neglected role of residential sorting

Policy Quarterly, 2015

One of the curious features of recent writing on income inequality is the scant attention paid to... more One of the curious features of recent writing on income inequality is the scant attention paid to the geography of inequality, to the spatial separation of rich and poor. While it is recognised that social capital can be enhanced by residential sorting into more homogeneous groups, there is longstanding concern that this same residential sorting may exacerbate existing inequality by inhibiting the social mobility of the poor (Turner and Fortuny, 2009). The perspective I want to advance here differs from the standard ‘neighbourhood effects’ literature by focusing not on those living in poor neighbourhoods, but instead on the benefits residential sorting may yield for the rich – the way in which location decisions redistribute income to the upper end of the income distribution and hence further income (and wealth) inequality.

Who cares about income inequality?

Policy Quarterly, 2015

On the eve of the lecture by the authors of The Spirit Level at the University of Auckland in May... more On the eve of the lecture by the authors of The Spirit Level at the University of Auckland in May 2014, Tim Hazledine pointed to a 2006 international survey which found that New Zealanders were less supportive of redistributing income from the rich to the poor than people in most other nations in the survey. ‘I don’t think that leads to saying all is well’, Hazledine said. ‘I think inequality is a problem. But we have to understand why we tolerate it’; ‘We have to understand why we don’t have blood flowing in the streets’ (Collins, 2014).

Research Into Labour, Employment and Work in New Zealand: An Overview

Labour, Employment and Work in New Zealand, 1996

The purpose of this overview is to take stock of the research into labour, employment and work un... more

Multilevel estimation of contextual effects What's the problem?

An immigrant at heart: Andy Trlin" NEW ZEALAND POPULATION REVIEW (accepted)

There were few academics more closely associated with research on immigration and population poli... more There were few academics more closely associated with research on immigration and population policy in New Zealand than Andrew (Andy) Trlin. A scholar, writer and raconteur, Andrew's impressive output of academic papers, reports and submissions is testimony to a dedication and determination that has been widely appreciated by the population community in both New Zealand and abroad. In this retrospective paper, I review Andrew's work on immigration and settlement, immigration policy, fertility and race relations in addition to his meticulous research into the history Croatian settlement in New Zealand. The review contains a full bibliography of Andrew's sole and co-authored publications.

Understanding Insecure Work

The Measurement of Regional Growth and Wellbeing

Handbook of Regional Science, 2013

Our understanding of people’s well-being was, until very recently, inferred from observable objec... more Our understanding of people’s well-being was, until very recently, inferred from observable objective indicators such as their income and education. These measures were then aggregated to generate an average that characterized the city or region. With the growing availability of sample survey data, we now have at our disposal an increasing range of subjective measures of well-being that capture quality of life assessments made by individuals themselves. It is these internal measures of subjective well-being from microdata that are now being widely used throughout the social sciences to study what we call well-being or “happiness.” Contemporary interest in subjective measures of well-being stems from a wish to supplement market-based criteria such as GDP per capita with other more direct measures of societal well-being. Subjective measures are particularly useful in areas where the distribution of outcomes is not easily identified using other, especially market, criteria. The effect of investment in public infrastructure or the provision of green space or in fostering community networks or in redeveloping neighborhoods can be captured in responses to questions on wellbeing, preferably over time. These subjective measures, which have been shown to be highly correlated with clinical and other assessments of well-being, are likely to be of particular interest in regional science because of the way changes to places result from, or generate, a range of positive or negative externalities.

Applica'ons of Stata's 'margins' in social science

Using the margins command to es'mate and interpret adjusted predic'ons and marginal effects. The ... more

Subjective and Objective Well-Being

Human values, subjective well-being and the metropolitan region

Regional Studies, 2017

Human values, subjective well-being and the metropolitan region. Regional Studies. Living in a co... more Human values, subjective well-being and the metropolitan region. Regional Studies. Living in a country's largest metropolitan centre has a negative effect on subjective well-being. Although documented in many developed economies, the reasons for this particular geography of well-being are still poorly understood. Meanwhile a separate body of research has shown that the holding of extrinsic or personally focused values is also associated with lower levels of subjective well-being. This paper demonstrates the link between the two. It draws on the European Social Survey (ESS) 2012 to show how metropolitan residents in Finland are more likely to hold extrinsic values such as power and achievement.

Who cares about job security?

This paper draws on responses to two job security questions in the World Values Surveys administe... more This paper draws on responses to two job security questions in the World Values Surveys administered in Australia and New Zealand in the 1990s and 2000s in order to identify the degree to which people prioritise and otherwise attach importance to job security. While most people regard job security as an important aspect of any job only about a quarter prioritise 'a safe job' above other attributes. In order to identify who cares about job security the two indicators of subjective job security are modelled as a function of people's education, income, age, and employment status. Not surprisingly, those who care most about job security are those with limited formal education, low incomes, poorer health and older age. However, the degree to which security concerns differ between the most and least vulnerable is relatively small. This reflects the fact that almost all workers are subject to both temporal and spatial variations in labour demand as well as the fact that non-economic factors such as a person's level of risk aversion can also influence how any given objective measure of job security is appraised subjectively.

Unemployment and Urban labour markets

Urban Studies, 2005

Two quite distinct views on how metropolitan labour markets work have co-existed for over three d... more Two quite distinct views on how metropolitan labour markets work have co-existed for over three decades. Both claim empirical support and, after a brief period of confrontation, they continue to co-exist today giving quite conflicting signals to policy-makers. According to the first model, the urban labour market consists of a number of spatially defined sub-markets so that local unemployment exists primarily because of deficiencies in highly localised demand for labour. By this argument, unemployment rates remain high in the absence of a renewed supply of appropriate jobs within short commuting distances of the jobless. The solution according to this model is to attract private- and public-sector production into such areas. In contrast, a second model views the city as a single market in which transactions between labour and capital take place regardless of the location of residence and employment sites. According to this perspective, the spatial incidence of unemployment simply re...

Segmentation theory applied to local, regional and spatial labour markets

Progress in Human Geography, 1990

Restructuring effects of deregulation: the case of the New Zealand taxi industry

Environment and Planning A, 1997

In most countries the taxi industry is highly regulated and in cases where deregulation has been ... more In most countries the taxi industry is highly regulated and in cases where deregulation has been attempted, positive outcomes have not always been evident. The taxi industry was one of the very last to be deregulated by the New Zealand government as part of its sweeping restructuring of the country's industry in the 1980s. The author looks at the impact of that 1989 Act. The 1989 legislation, which removed the quantitative controls (deregulation), has been followed by a tripling of the number of companies in the metropolitan centres and a massive increase in the number of taxi cabs. A much wider range of taxi services now exploit different market segments and offer a wider geographic coverage. These changes have been accompanied by a decline in fares in real, if not nominal, terms. As expected, the influx of new players has necessitated the imposition of additional quality controls. Customers have benefited from greater numbers of cabs, shorter waiting times, and a greater range...

Residential sorting and social mobility in New Zealand

Policy Quarterly, 2011

This article argues that the residential sorting process which confers advantages on those who ca... more This article argues that the residential sorting process which confers advantages on those who can choose their residential environments may also deny such advantages to others. The policy question therefore is the degree to which residing in neighbourhoods with relatively high levels of deprivation lowers people’s prospects of social mobility.

Well-being and ill-being on campus

Enquiries into the low mental health of university students are exposing the relative merits of c... more Enquiries into the low mental health of university students are exposing the relative merits of competing theoretical and empirical models. The debate is important because the models used to characterise the problem imply alternative causations, consequences, and possible interventions. The purpose of our study is to highlight the value of recognising the presence of both well-being and ill-being within individual students (the dual continua model) as opposed to viewing their well-being and ill-being as opposite ends of a single continuum of mental health (the bipolar model). Using a baseline survey completed by 1,581 first year undergraduate students who enrolled in a New Zealand university at the beginning of 2019, we document the inverse correlation between their scores on the WHO-5 measure of psychological well-being and the PHQ-9 measure of psychological distress or ill-being. Contrary to the assumption of the bipolar model we find their inverse correlation is not strong and that many students are located off the diagonal, some reporting both high well-being and high ill-being over the two-week reference period and many more recording low scores on both screening instruments. We represent this heterogeneity in terms of six clusters of students based on a latent profile analysis of their two scores. We also find that students' well-being and ill-being respond differently to variations in their physical and financial health both in cross-section and over time, confirming that well-being and ill-being can also be functionally independent. The results are important both diagnostically and in terms of the interventions they suggest.

Aversion to Local Wellbeing Inequality is Moderated by Social Engagement and Sense of Community

Our subjective wellbeing is a mix of our personal and community wellbeing. One indication of thei... more Our subjective wellbeing is a mix of our personal and community wellbeing. One indication of their close relationship is the strong negative correlation between our own subjective wellbeing and the degree of subjective wellbeing inequality within our community. This negative relationship reflects our innate and socialized inequality aversion and holds regardless of whether the group is large as in the case of countries or small in the case of local neighbourhoods. While the country case has been well documented in the subjective wellbeing literature, the relationship between the local community distribution of subjective wellbeing and individual subjective wellbeing has received little attention. In this paper we demonstrate the sensitivity of individual life satisfaction to the distribution of life satisfaction within electoral wards in urban New Zealand and explore several possible behavioural drivers. We find that having social support and feeling a sense of community both reduce the negative effects of local subjective wellbeing inequality, while being less socially engaged exaggerates them. Our results highlight the potential that programmes aimed at reducing wellbeing inequalities within local communities might play in raising individual as well as average wellbeing.

Wellbeing Heterogeneity within and Among University Students

The widespread international concern over the low average wellbeing of university students shows ... more The widespread international concern over the low average wellbeing of university students shows no sign of abating. Neglected in the debate is a recognition that wellbeing itself is multidimensional and not all components respond in the same way to external and internal pressures. We draw on a large sample survey of first year students who enrolled in a New Zealand university in 2019 and measure their wellbeing using the WHO-5 measuring instrument. Instead of modelling the index itself we address its five individual components. We apply the marginal (populationaverages) model using the generalised estimating equation (GEE) method. As well as confirming earlier findings that students with poorer physical health and lower financial capacity experience lower levels of wellbeing, we document their uneven influence on the relative frequency with which the five individual components are experienced: being cheerful, calm, active, fresh and interested over the previous two teaching weeks.

Wellbeing Heterogeneity within and Among University Students

Applied Research in Quality of Life

The widespread international concern over the low average wellbeing of university students shows ... more The widespread international concern over the low average wellbeing of university students shows no sign of abating. Neglected in the debate is a recognition that wellbeing itself is multidimensional and not all components respond in the same way to external and internal pressures. We draw on a large sample survey of first year students who enrolled in a New Zealand university in 2019 and measure their wellbeing using the WHO-5 measuring instrument. Instead of modelling the index itself we address its five individual components. We apply the marginal (population-averages) model using the generalised estimating equation (GEE) method. As well as confirming earlier findings that students with poorer physical health and lower financial capacity experience lower levels of wellbeing, we document their uneven influence on the relative frequency with which the five individual components are experienced: being cheerful, calm, active, fresh and interested over the previous two teaching weeks.

Aversion to Local Wellbeing Inequality is Moderated by Social Engagement and Sense of Community

Social Indicators Research, 2021

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more

The inequality debate: the neglected role of residential sorting

Policy Quarterly, 2015

One of the curious features of recent writing on income inequality is the scant attention paid to... more One of the curious features of recent writing on income inequality is the scant attention paid to the geography of inequality, to the spatial separation of rich and poor. While it is recognised that social capital can be enhanced by residential sorting into more homogeneous groups, there is longstanding concern that this same residential sorting may exacerbate existing inequality by inhibiting the social mobility of the poor (Turner and Fortuny, 2009). The perspective I want to advance here differs from the standard ‘neighbourhood effects’ literature by focusing not on those living in poor neighbourhoods, but instead on the benefits residential sorting may yield for the rich – the way in which location decisions redistribute income to the upper end of the income distribution and hence further income (and wealth) inequality.

Who cares about income inequality?

Policy Quarterly, 2015

On the eve of the lecture by the authors of The Spirit Level at the University of Auckland in May... more On the eve of the lecture by the authors of The Spirit Level at the University of Auckland in May 2014, Tim Hazledine pointed to a 2006 international survey which found that New Zealanders were less supportive of redistributing income from the rich to the poor than people in most other nations in the survey. ‘I don’t think that leads to saying all is well’, Hazledine said. ‘I think inequality is a problem. But we have to understand why we tolerate it’; ‘We have to understand why we don’t have blood flowing in the streets’ (Collins, 2014).

Research Into Labour, Employment and Work in New Zealand: An Overview

Labour, Employment and Work in New Zealand, 1996

The purpose of this overview is to take stock of the research into labour, employment and work un... more

Multilevel estimation of contextual effects What's the problem?

An immigrant at heart: Andy Trlin" NEW ZEALAND POPULATION REVIEW (accepted)

There were few academics more closely associated with research on immigration and population poli... more There were few academics more closely associated with research on immigration and population policy in New Zealand than Andrew (Andy) Trlin. A scholar, writer and raconteur, Andrew's impressive output of academic papers, reports and submissions is testimony to a dedication and determination that has been widely appreciated by the population community in both New Zealand and abroad. In this retrospective paper, I review Andrew's work on immigration and settlement, immigration policy, fertility and race relations in addition to his meticulous research into the history Croatian settlement in New Zealand. The review contains a full bibliography of Andrew's sole and co-authored publications.

Understanding Insecure Work

The Measurement of Regional Growth and Wellbeing

Handbook of Regional Science, 2013

Our understanding of people’s well-being was, until very recently, inferred from observable objec... more Our understanding of people’s well-being was, until very recently, inferred from observable objective indicators such as their income and education. These measures were then aggregated to generate an average that characterized the city or region. With the growing availability of sample survey data, we now have at our disposal an increasing range of subjective measures of well-being that capture quality of life assessments made by individuals themselves. It is these internal measures of subjective well-being from microdata that are now being widely used throughout the social sciences to study what we call well-being or “happiness.” Contemporary interest in subjective measures of well-being stems from a wish to supplement market-based criteria such as GDP per capita with other more direct measures of societal well-being. Subjective measures are particularly useful in areas where the distribution of outcomes is not easily identified using other, especially market, criteria. The effect of investment in public infrastructure or the provision of green space or in fostering community networks or in redeveloping neighborhoods can be captured in responses to questions on wellbeing, preferably over time. These subjective measures, which have been shown to be highly correlated with clinical and other assessments of well-being, are likely to be of particular interest in regional science because of the way changes to places result from, or generate, a range of positive or negative externalities.

Applica'ons of Stata's 'margins' in social science

Using the margins command to es'mate and interpret adjusted predic'ons and marginal effects. The ... more

Subjective and Objective Well-Being

Human values, subjective well-being and the metropolitan region

Regional Studies, 2017

Human values, subjective well-being and the metropolitan region. Regional Studies. Living in a co... more Human values, subjective well-being and the metropolitan region. Regional Studies. Living in a country's largest metropolitan centre has a negative effect on subjective well-being. Although documented in many developed economies, the reasons for this particular geography of well-being are still poorly understood. Meanwhile a separate body of research has shown that the holding of extrinsic or personally focused values is also associated with lower levels of subjective well-being. This paper demonstrates the link between the two. It draws on the European Social Survey (ESS) 2012 to show how metropolitan residents in Finland are more likely to hold extrinsic values such as power and achievement.

Who cares about job security?

This paper draws on responses to two job security questions in the World Values Surveys administe... more This paper draws on responses to two job security questions in the World Values Surveys administered in Australia and New Zealand in the 1990s and 2000s in order to identify the degree to which people prioritise and otherwise attach importance to job security. While most people regard job security as an important aspect of any job only about a quarter prioritise 'a safe job' above other attributes. In order to identify who cares about job security the two indicators of subjective job security are modelled as a function of people's education, income, age, and employment status. Not surprisingly, those who care most about job security are those with limited formal education, low incomes, poorer health and older age. However, the degree to which security concerns differ between the most and least vulnerable is relatively small. This reflects the fact that almost all workers are subject to both temporal and spatial variations in labour demand as well as the fact that non-economic factors such as a person's level of risk aversion can also influence how any given objective measure of job security is appraised subjectively.

Unemployment and Urban labour markets

Urban Studies, 2005

Two quite distinct views on how metropolitan labour markets work have co-existed for over three d... more Two quite distinct views on how metropolitan labour markets work have co-existed for over three decades. Both claim empirical support and, after a brief period of confrontation, they continue to co-exist today giving quite conflicting signals to policy-makers. According to the first model, the urban labour market consists of a number of spatially defined sub-markets so that local unemployment exists primarily because of deficiencies in highly localised demand for labour. By this argument, unemployment rates remain high in the absence of a renewed supply of appropriate jobs within short commuting distances of the jobless. The solution according to this model is to attract private- and public-sector production into such areas. In contrast, a second model views the city as a single market in which transactions between labour and capital take place regardless of the location of residence and employment sites. According to this perspective, the spatial incidence of unemployment simply re...

Segmentation theory applied to local, regional and spatial labour markets

Progress in Human Geography, 1990

Restructuring effects of deregulation: the case of the New Zealand taxi industry

Environment and Planning A, 1997

In most countries the taxi industry is highly regulated and in cases where deregulation has been ... more In most countries the taxi industry is highly regulated and in cases where deregulation has been attempted, positive outcomes have not always been evident. The taxi industry was one of the very last to be deregulated by the New Zealand government as part of its sweeping restructuring of the country's industry in the 1980s. The author looks at the impact of that 1989 Act. The 1989 legislation, which removed the quantitative controls (deregulation), has been followed by a tripling of the number of companies in the metropolitan centres and a massive increase in the number of taxi cabs. A much wider range of taxi services now exploit different market segments and offer a wider geographic coverage. These changes have been accompanied by a decline in fares in real, if not nominal, terms. As expected, the influx of new players has necessitated the imposition of additional quality controls. Customers have benefited from greater numbers of cabs, shorter waiting times, and a greater range...