Time & Location

Wednesday 6th December 2023, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
e61 Institute, Level 3/17-21 Bellevue Street Surry Hills NSW 2010, Australia | Online

About the event

Kristen Sobeck will be presenting on:  Does decreasing the generosity of payments to single parents have employment and earnings effects? Evidence from Australian administrative data.  The presentation will run for approximately 45 minutes followed by a 15 minute Q&A.

Authors: Kristen Sobeck & Robert Breunig

Abstract:

We examine the impact of two changes to Australia’s Parenting Payment Single (PSS) program, a welfare payment for low-income single mothers.  One change lowered the age of youngest child cut off for program eligibility, forcing new welfare entrants onto the less generous Newstart payment.  A second change increased job search requirements for those on PPS.  We use a difference-in-difference strategy which exploits the rule changes combined with an unannounced end to grandfathering provisions to disentangle the two effects.  We find little effects of the increased job search requirements.  The decreased generosity of the program does not change the overall number of single mothers in employment.  However, it produces a large decrease in the share of single mothers who rely on a combination of welfare and employment.  Between 31.1 and 36.1 per cent of single mothers who ever received PPS between 2011 and 2016 eliminated their use of welfare.  On average, likely due to the decreased generosity of the welfare payments, single mothers had lower incomes after the policy changes.