Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research - Research Publications

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Welfare Entry and Exit after Marital Separation among Australian Mothers

Bradbury, B ; Zhu, A (WILEY, 2018-12)

Australian administrative data is used to examine patterns of welfare receipt for up to 5 and a half years after marital separation. We examine relationship status, income support and other incomes both before and after separation with a particular focus on the routes into and out of welfare receipt. Exits associated with new partnering are compared with those likely to be due to earnings increases. We find substantial volatility in relationships, with around a third of separations being only temporary (re‐partnering with the original partner). Focusing on the permanent separations, we find a convergence in the welfare receipt rates of initially well‐off and poor mothers, which is then slowly unwound as more advantaged mothers leave welfare at a faster rate. The channels of welfare exit (finding a new partner versus exiting welfare while remaining single) are associated with different characteristics. Family size is an equally important predictor of exit rates as the age of the youngest child.
Introduction

Salamanca, N ; Zhu, A (WILEY, 2017-09-01)

This book builds on the burgeoning evidence-informed practice movement in social welfare that evolved from evidence-based medicine some twenty years ago.
Parenting style as an investment in human development

Cobb-Clark, DA ; Salamanca, N ; Zhu, A (Springer (part of Springer Nature), 2019-10-01)

We propose a household production function approach to human development that explicitly considers the role of parenting style in child rearing. Specifically, parenting style is modeled as an investment that depends not only on inputs of time and market goods, but also on attention. Our model relates socioeconomic disadvantage to parenting style and human development through the constraints that disadvantage places on cognitive capacity. We find empirical support for key features of our model. Parenting style is a construct that is distinctive to standard parental investments and is important for young-adult outcomes. Effective parenting styles are negatively correlated with disadvantage.
The relation between cesarean birth and child cognitive development

Polidano, C ; Zhu, A ; Bornstein, JC (NATURE PORTFOLIO, 2017-09-13)

This is the first detailed study of the relation between cesarean birth and child cognitive development. We measure differences in child cognitive performance at 4 to 9 years of age between cesarean-born and vaginally-born children (n = 3,666) participating in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). LSAC is a nationally representative birth cohort surveyed biennially. Using multivariate regression, we control for a large range of confounders related to perinatal risk factors and the socio-economic advantage associated with cesarean-born children. Across several measures, we find that cesarean-born children perform significantly below vaginally-born children, by up to a tenth of a standard deviation in national numeracy test scores at age 8-9. Estimates from a low-risk sub-sample and lower-bound analysis suggest that the relation is not spuriously related to unobserved confounding. Lower rates of breastfeeding and adverse child and maternal health outcomes that are associated with cesarean birth are found to explain less than a third of the cognitive gap, which points to the importance of other mechanisms such as disturbed gut microbiota. The findings underline the need for a precautionary approach in responding to requests for a planned cesarean when there are no apparent elevated risks from vaginal birth.
Childhood homelessness and adult employment: the role of education, incarceration, and welfare receipt

Cobb-Clark, DA ; Zhu, A (Springer Nature, 2017-07-01)

This paper examines the long-run employment consequences of experiencing homelessness in childhood rather than later in life. We use novel panel data that link survey and administrative data for a sample of disadvantaged adults who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Our estimation approach pays particular attention to the potential pathways linking childhood homelessness to adult employment. We find that those experiencing homelessness for the first time as children are less likely to be employed. For women, this relationship is largely explained by the lower educational attainment and higher welfare receipt (both in general and in the form of mental illness-related disability payments) of those experiencing childhood homelessness. Higher rates of high school incompletion and incarceration explain some of the link between childhood homelessness and men’s employment; however, childhood homelessness continues to have a substantial direct effect on male employment rates.