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Article History

Received: 3 September 2025

Accepted: 8 June 2026

First Online: 28 July 2026

Declarations

Ethics approval: The HILDA Survey commenced in 2001 and has been conducted annually in accordance with the University of Melbourne’s ethical guidelines. The Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of Melbourne has approved this research project. The ethics ID number of the research project (HILDA Survey) is 1647030. The HILDA Survey is conducted under a new human research ethics approval (Project ID 31363, approved February 2025) received from The University of Melbourne. This paper uses unit record data from the HILDA conducted by the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS). This study did not require ethical approval as the analysis used only de-identified existing unit record data from the HILDA Survey.

Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Informed consent: To participate in the HILDA Survey was obtained through an information letter sent to all potential respondents. This letter described the voluntary nature of participation in The Survey and outlined that informed consent would be implied when participants agreed to be interviewed. Further, more detailed information about the purposes of the HILDA was sent after the interview to Wave 1 respondents (and any new sample members at later waves), along with further information about the way the data are being held, what is being done with the data, and how individuals can, on request (but after undergoing a range of security checks), access that information.

Declaration of AI assistance: The authors acknowledge the use of Gemini 2.5 Pro (https://gemini.google.com/app) and Grammarly to enhance the academic language and readability of this manuscript. On 14 April 2026, the corresponding author used the prompt, “Improve the academic tone and accuracy of language, including grammatical structures, punctuation, and vocabulary,” with Gemini 2.5 Pro. The output was subsequently revised by the authors to align with the intended meaning and style. Grammarly was used for a final proofreading check. The authors retained full responsibility for the final content of this paper.