ANU researchers want to find out why some children from income-support families are more likely to end up on welfare.
At 18, Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark was beginning to make important decisions about her future, as were her peers at Everett High School in Lansing, Michigan, and millions of other teenagers about the same age around the world.
Although the late teens and early twenties are often looked back on as one of the most carefree times of one’s life, what is probably unrecognised about these years is their formative importance; it is a time when choices are made about career paths, families and educational investments. And it seems this youthful age could also be informative about a worrying social phenomenon, in which children from income-support dependent families are increasingly relying on social security into adulthood.
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Why are the children of families who rely on income-support more likely to also depend on welfare when they’re older? A study led by ANU researchers that merges administrative data with attitudinal surveys is set to find out.
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Cobb-Clark and colleagues from the Social Policy Evaluation Analysis and Research Centre at the Research School of Social Sciences and the Faculty of Economics and Commerce are embarking on a novel research project to definitively study the consequences of growing up in a family that relies on income-support.
“We know from previous research on this issue that kids who grow up in families on income support have a higher probability of being on income support themselves, but we don’t know why,” Cobb-Clark says.
“It could be that being in an income-support family means your educational opportunities are limited, and therefore your labour market opportunities are limited. It could be the result of health issues or due to chronic poverty.
“We also don’t clearly understand why some young people succeed from family backgrounds that rely on income-support, while others do not.
“Without information about why this pattern is occurring, it’s difficult to implement the appropriate policies to improve the outcomes for young people,” she says.
As part of the Youth in Focus project, the researchers will draw on the national income-support database provided by the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, which is the industry partner in the Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage project.
This project will differ from its predecessors through a dual analysis of administrative data – information about an individual’s interaction with the income-support system – and survey data about people’s aspirations, goals, values, and personal relationships.
The project will identify a group of 4,000 18-year-olds and conduct a series of interviews about their experiences and attitudes over the next five years. It will also include an interview with their parents.
“The real power of the data will be to marry that contextual information with the administrative data,” Cobb-Clark says. “In the U.S. it would be an impossible task, because each state administers its own social security system – that’s 50 systems – and no two are exactly the same.
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“I think a view is beginning to develop that if you really want to make a difference in policy interventions, earlier is better than later. It’s much easier to intervene with young people than it is to wait until they have five years worth of social support behind them and they are dealing with other issues that make it difficult, such as substance abuse."
Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark
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“Here, all the major social support mechanisms are federal – tax, health, family support services – so we do have quite a bit of data we can draw on to really dig deep.”
Cobb-Clark and her collaborators, including Dr Robert Breunig and Dr Tue Gørgens from ANU and researchers from the University of Melbourne and the University of Wisconsin, expect to have initial results in early 2007.
The findings will be used for policy development around issues relating to family and community services, health, education, and youth affairs.
They will also be useful for researchers working on Australian social policy and for non-government support agencies, which will be able to use the information to better target support services.
Cobb-Clark says her interest in the project can be seen from two perspectives. As an applied economist, she views it as an opportunity to draw on huge amounts of quantitative and qualitative data.
But she says it’s also interesting from a policy standpoint that allows her to focus on youth issues.
“I think a view is beginning to develop that if you really want to make a difference in policy interventions, earlier is better than later,” she says.
“It’s much easier to intervene with young people than it is to wait until they have five years worth of social support behind them and they are dealing with other issues that make it difficult, such as substance abuse.
“There’s starting to be quite a bit of attention on and interest in children, and that’s a good thing too. There are a number of very interesting and important transitions that young people are making at 18: decisions about leaving school, establishing families and further education.
“There’s simply a lot happening with young people at that point in their lives and it really is a critical time.”
There is also a lot happening for Cobb-Clark too, who, apart from coordinating the Youth in Focus project, is also conducting an ARC-funded study on how overseas-born Australian populations hold their wealth.
“This is a significant social policy issue for Australia, and also for the U.S., because on average the foreign-born population is older than the general population, mainly because of historical patterns of migration. These people are retiring now and into the future, but studies have shown that they hold their wealth differently – often in more liquid assets than the traditional Australian bricks and mortar.
“We’re looking into why that is and its implications. It might be because they have certain intentions regarding retirement, like moving back to their birth country, or it could be a generational influence – in other words their parents held portable wealth, such as jewellery, so they do the same.
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“These decisions on assets are quite important, as they impact on issues surrounding the ageing population, as well as on tax and health policy.”
Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark
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“These decisions on assets are quite important, as they impact on issues surrounding the ageing population, as well as on tax and health policy.”
Cobb-Clark is also continuing her research into racial and sexual harassment in the U.S. military (both within the military and in the communities which have military bases nearby). She also works extensively on labour market issues generally, and health and family income.
“It seems like a lot, but the common thread through all the projects is the study of the impact of social policy on individuals’ outcomes.
“Social policy can be defined very broadly: it can be about immigration, education, housing, childcare
or health.
“But the methods you’re using to evaluate each issue are more or less the same irrespective of the policy. You have to understand enough about the institutional background and how the policy actually works to be able to do a sensible evaluation, but the methods we’re using to evaluate each policy are pretty much consistent across the board.”
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