An analysis of the determinants of the labour market activities of housing assistance recipients

Summary

Housing assistance measures, whether demand subsidies or in-kind transfers, potentially impact on the labour market activity of recipients. Whereas there is evidence that recipients of commonwealth rent assistance have lower labour market attachment to a comparable group of individuals that receive government payments, there is only weak evidence of a negative impact of public housing tenancy on labour market activity.


Project Number: 60203
Research Theme: Economic, Demographics_and_Modelling
Project Leader: Whelan, Stephen
Funding Year: 2003
Research Centre: Sydney

Description

Analysing data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics Australia (HILDA) survey, the labour force participation of public tenants and Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) recipients is compared with a group of income support recipients who are neither public tenants nor CRA recipients.

The analysis compares those of working age who are not disabled. Amounts of CRA received are imputed. The sample contains a small number of public tenants.

The key findings of the research are:

  • Work ready public housing tenants are 25 per cent more likely to report receipt of a wage/salary than work ready CRA recipients or the comparison group of income support recipients. The analysis does not control for all other factors.
  • Controlling for all other factors, amongst work ready individuals CRA recipients are 8 per cent less likely to be in employment than a comparison group of income support recipients.
  • If people are in employment, CRA is found to have no impact on the number of hours worked, whilst public housing is found to have a small disincentive effect. Entrants to public housing reduce their working hours by 1.73 hours per week and exiters from public housing increase their working hours by 1.84 hours per week. The analysis is based on a sample of 43 and 48 public tenants respectively.

More Information

Download now Positioning Paper: No. 078: An analysis of the determinants of the labour market activities of housing assistance recipients
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Download now Final Report: No. 070: An analysis of the determinants of the labour market activities of housing assistance recipients
1.28 MB PDF Document

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