The Relationship between Labor Market Conditions and Welfare Receipt in Australia: A Stock-Flow Analysis

This paper estimates the role of labor market conditions in the recent decline in welfare receipt among the working age population in Australia. A stock-flow model is used, which involves modeling the underlying welfare flows and using the results to simulate the effect of labor market conditions on the welfare stock. The simulation analysis suggests that improvements in the labor market explain the majority of the decline. A range of robustness checks are undertaken including using alternative levels of geographic disaggregation to deal with likely measurement error in labor market data.