Short communicationHow many children are exposed to at-risk parental gambling in Australia? Results from a representative national sample
Section snippets
Design and participants
The analysis in this paper used data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey: a large-scale nationally representative longitudinal survey. The HILDA Survey started in 2001, involves annual data collection, and seeks to interview all household members aged 15 years or older. In the initial wave (2001), households were selected via a multistage area-based clustered sample design and a household response rate of 66% was achieved. Annual re-interview rates are
Results
Table 1 shows Australian population estimates with 95% confidence intervals of the distribution of individuals across the four gambling risk categories. The table also presents the proportion of Australian individuals with and without dependent children under 15 years of age in their care across the risk categories. The large majority of Australians over the age of 15 did not experience at-risk gambling and 0.7 per cent experienced serious gambling problems in the previous 12 months. The
Discussion
This paper is the first to report the proportion of families and number of children exposed to at-risk parental gambling at the population level. The overall rates of gambling risk in the current study were similar to those reported internationally and in other Australian studies (Calado & Griffiths, 2016) and to those reported previously on the HILDA Survey (Paterson et al., 2020).
According to the current data, nearly 200,000 children in Australia were exposed to parental gambling at moderate
Limitations and future directions
Limitations of the study include the use of a cross-sectional snapshot from the HILDA Survey data, and a lack of information about child wellbeing in the current sample. It will be possible, however, to examine child outcomes longitudinally using the HILDA data when children described in the current analysis become eligible study respondents (when they turn 15 years of age). The methodological validity of the PGSI measure to accurately capture gambling harms – particularly at the lower end of
Conclusion
The current study presents the first analysis reporting the number of children in general population exposed to parental at-risk gambling. The findings significantly add on the understanding of the extent of gambling harm on population level and expand the knowledge about this particularly vulnerable group of affected others: dependent children. The large number of children exposed in this study is sufficient to justify the intensification of public health initiatives to reduce gambling harm in
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare in relation to this article. The 3-year declaration of interest statement of this research team is as follows: AS, NW, PB have received funding from multiple sources, including Australian government departments. AS has also received funding from the state and territory governments in Australia including Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation (through hypothecated taxes from gambling revenue).
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