Riyana (Mira) Miranti joined NATSEM in October 2007. As a socio-economist and development economist, she has a strong research interest in the research areas related to social wellbeing and equity particularly focusing on the issues of disadvantage and wellbeing including poverty, social exclusion and inequality affecting children, youth, older people and other groups of population. Mira has two countries of specialisation, Australia and Indonesia.

Mira has continuously worked extensively in the area of economic development for Southeast Asia, particularly for Indonesia.  She pioneered the Indonesian related research activities at NATSEM/IGPA. Mira is currently a Convenor of Indonesian Program at IGPA for both education and research, actively promotes IGPA activities by engaging with key stakeholders covering both academic and policy makers in Indonesia.  Prior to her PhD, she worked as a Research Associate at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore.  Mira has also led many applied commissioned research projects on Indonesian economic development issues for various international agencies including the USAID, UNESCO, OECD and the ADB, particularly in the areas of poverty, inequality and social protection for children. The OECD report on ’Trends in Poverty and Inequality in Decentralising Indonesia’, that she led, has been cited widely.

Mira has been working extensively under several Australian Research Council (ARC) grants which focus on children and youth wellbeing at the spatial level, including the ARC Discovery - Opportunity and Disadvantage: Differences in wellbeing among Australian Adults and ARC Discovery - Children and Child and Youth Social Exclusion in Australia at a small area level which explore the multidimensional measures of wellbeing.  She has been one of the key researchers who developed the Child and Youth Social Exclusion Index at a small area level in Australia.  Both Child and Youth Social Exclusion Indices have been used by policy makers such as the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development and the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE) and also by service providers such as the Red Cross and ACOSS.

Mira has led many research projects in the area of wellbeing of older adults including developing a new conceptual framework to understand well-being of older adults taking into account location and mobility. This work has been extended to estimate the prevalence of social exclusion of older adults in Australia. Recently, Mira was the co-author of an AMP.NATSEM Income and Wealth Report entitled ‘Going the distance: working longer, living healthier’ which examines the relationship between health and working in later life and was co-author of two other reports in this field namely: ‘Small area Indicators of Wellbeing for Older Australians (IWOA)’, a report for the Benevolent Society and ’Index of Educational Advantage (IdEA)’, a report for the Commonwealth Department of Education and Training.

In addition, over the past three years, Mira’s contribution has extended into the concept of underemployment and involuntary under and non-participation in the labour market among mature age workers and older Australians, and the impact of aspects such as mental health and financial security on older people. Mira was the Chief Investigator representing the UC team for the ARC Linkage (LP120100624) – ‘Understanding and preventing workforce vulnerabilities in mid-life and beyond’.

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