Matthew Curry

Title: The Effect of Parental Joblessness on Wages in Australia

Abstract: Parental joblessness, which is increasingly being used as an indicator of childhood poverty, is negatively associated with children’s educational attainment and employment in adulthood. However, its impact on children’s wage outcomes in early adulthood remains understudied. Using household panel data from the HILDA Survey, we investigate whether time spent with jobless parents during childhood and adolescence is associated with lower wages during early adulthood, conditional on employment. We use a multilevel mixed effects regression, finding negative associations between exposure to parental joblessness and wages after controlling for observable characteristics such as educational attainment, demographic background, and socioeconomic origins. These results suggest that in Australia, the employed children of jobless parents face wage penalties in addition to previously-established employment penalties

Presenter: Matthew Curry, Melbourne Institute

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