The number of girls studying economics has declined. Today – as a direct result – many young Australians have never witnessed a recession. And cushioned by the good economic times, our national public policy discourse has degenerated. The past decade, in particular, of economic policy making has been marked by abysmal failures and frustration: carbon pricing implemented and then dismantled, mining taxes proposed and then overturned by megaphone-wielding mining billionaires and historic tax reviews by venerable public servants left gathering dust on the shelf. Are we losing our ability, as a nation, to have the great economic debates?

Head of the Reserve Bank's information department, Jacqui Dwyer. If we haven't already, we may soon, according to troubling new evidence from the Reserve Bank. In a speech last week, the head of the Reserve Bank's information department, Jacqui Dwyer, painted a truly troubling picture of the state of economic literacy of young Australians today. Much fuss has been made about the decline in enrolments in STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. But the decline in economics enrolments has been even more dramatic. Since 1992, the number of year 12 students taking economics has declined by almost 70 per cent, from 40,000 to closer to 10,000.

Instead, students are taking up "business studies" with gusto. Why? According to Dwyer: "Business studies is widely perceived as a more employable subject than economics, is less demanding for students to learn and is easier for educators to teach." "In essence, economics has an image problem...too few students understand what economics is and how it might be relevant to them." Looking deeper into student enrolments, it emerges that young women, in particular, have been turning their backs on economics. While 25 years ago, high school economics classes were evenly split by gender, today there is just one female economics student for every two males. The decline in female economics enrolments is most pronounced in co-ed and non-selective schools. Australia has never had a female Reserve Bank governor or Treasury Secretary – and we may not get there at this rate.

Similarly worrying is the skew in economics enrolments towards higher socio-economic schools. Tellingly, private schools and selective government schools are still versing students in the powerful language of economics. But students in non-selective government schools are taking up economics in fewer numbers. Relative to their 1991 levels, enrolments in economics have fallen the most in schools with low socio-economic ranks, an analysis of NSW schools found. "Taken together, the enrolments data in our NSW case study paint a picture of an economics student population that is falling in size and diversity," concludes Dwyer. So our schools are churning out more students capable of navigating a business's balance sheet, but fewer equipped to analyse the big economic trends of our era and to form conclusions about the best public policies to improve the lives of all Australians, especially our most vulnerable. And the very students whose families would have most to gain from those policies – low socio-economic households – are getting the least education on this point.

Troubling, indeed. From a self-interest point of view, the Reserve is concerned about the future pipeline of economists needed to stock the nation's economic institutions. But, more broadly, it also appears concerned about the quality of the national debate over public policy. "It is widely opined that the quality of public discourse in Australia – and elsewhere – has fallen and would benefit from greater economic literacy and engagement with economic ideas," observed Dwyer. To which she gave this plea to students considering studying economics: "The analytic skills and frameworks acquired in the study of economics can be used to explain or debate much of the world in which we live – from understanding the opportunity cost entailed in the many personal decisions we make, through to the big questions about why various groups in society experience such different outcomes in their economic wellbeing."

I couldn't agree more. The economic challenges of rampant inflation and recurrent recessions that pockmarked the 1980s and 1990s may have receded. But there is no shortage of new problems for younger generations of students to tackle, including housing affordability, intergenerational equity, future job opportunities, rising income inequality and the desperate need to change incentives in our economy to put a value on our natural environment. The work of economists is far from finished.