Journal article

Intergenerational disadvantage: Learning about equal opportunity from social assistance receipt

Deborah A Cobb-Clark, Sarah C Dahmann, Nicolás Salamanca, Anna Zhu

Labour Economics | Elsevier BV | Published : 2022

Abstract

We use variation in the intergenerational persistence across social assistance benefits over 18 years to study the drivers of intergenerational disadvantage. Young people are more likely to receive social assistance if their parents received disability, caring, or single parent benefits, and less likely if they received unemployment benefits. Disparity in intergenerational persistence across benefit types suggests that parental bad luck has broader consequences for youth disadvantage than do their personal choices. Using the intensive margin and timing of parental social assistance to account for unobserved heterogeneity indicates that intergenerational disadvantage is more likely driven by ..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by Australian Government


Funding Acknowledgements

We thank Andrew Bevitt, Melisa Bubonya, Haniene Tayeb, and Peter Thiem for providing outstanding research assistance on this project. The data used for this research come from the Youth in Focus Project which is jointly funded by the Australian Government and the Australian Research Council (Grant Number LP0347164) and carried out by the Australian National University. The research was also supported by the Australian Research Council through grants DP140102614 and LP190100117 as well as the Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (project number CE140100027 and CE200100025). The Centre is administered by the Institute for Social Science Research at The University of Queensland, with nodes at The University of Western Australia, The University of Melbourne and The University of Sydney. The views expressed herein are solely those of the authors.