Childhood Homelessness and Adult Employment: The Role of Education, Incarceration, and Welfare Receipt

Abstract

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARYPeople who become homeless as a child are more likely to have lower employment rates in adulthood than those who become homeless later. Our research, using the Journey's Home survey, found by the time they are adults, those who are first homeless after the age of 15 years have an employment rate of 24%. But those who become homeless at or before the age of 15 have an employment rate of just 10%.Interestingly, those who first become homeless during the teenage years of 15 and 16 years have the worst outcomes. Homeless children and adolescents tend to have very different life paths from those who become homeless later. We also found differences by gender.For women, those who become homeless as a child are more likely to drop out of high school than those who become homeless later in life. In fact, nearly half of the employment gap between those who were homeless in childhood versus later in life is related to dropping out of high school. It is the most important factor -and a potential milestone in the path from childhood homelessness to unemployment (or being out of the labour force) in adulthood. Welfare receipt in general and specifically for mental illness-related disability payments also account for a large percentage of the employment gap.For men, dropping out of high school also plays an important role in accounting for the employment gap between those who were homeless in childhood versus later in life. Incarceration between the ages of 17 and 20 years old (inclusive) also plays a role, albeit a smaller one. However, unlike for women, welfare receipt matters little in explaining the employment gap. It's likely this gendered difference in the results is related to the strong relationship between child bearing and welfare receipt. This non-technical summary is based on a piece published in The Conversation. Find the full story here: https://theconversation.com/childhood-homelessness-makes-for-adult-unemployment-study-48887ABOUT THE AUTHORS Deborah Cobb-Clark's research agenda centres on the effect of social policy on labour market outcomes including immigration, sexual and racial harassment, health, old-age support, education and youth transitions. In particular, she is currently leading the innovative Youth in Focus Project which is analysing the pathways through which social and economic disadvantage is transmitted from parents to children in Australia. Email: d.cobbclark@unimelb.edu.au. Anna Zhu AbstractThis paper analyzes children's long-term consequences of experiencing homelessness. Our primary goal is to assess the importance of the potential pathways linking childhood homelessness to adult employment. 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. We find that those experiencing homelessness for the first time as children are less likely to be employed than those who were never homeless as a child. For women, this relationship is largely explained by the lower educational attainme...

Estimating the population at-risk of homelessness in small areas, 2016

“…Those at-risk have lower levels of educational attainment and many of those at-risk have children living with them. Given what is known about intergenerational transmission of poverty, homelessness, and low educational attainment (Cobb-Clark 2019;Cobb-Clark and Zhu 2015), state and territory government investments supporting educational engagement for disadvantaged students could pay off in-terms of reducing future risk of homelessness. Additional supports for further education and training for adults with low educational attainment may also be required.…”

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“…McVicar et al (2015) and Diette and Ribar (2015) also examined substance use and exposure to violence as consequences of homelessness, and therefore are also relevant within the context of the second strand of research. In addition, Herault and Ribar (2016) investigated how homelessness may lead to food insecurity, and Cobb- Clark and Zhu (2015) the consequences of childhood experiences of homelessness for adult employment.…”

Economic and Noneconomic Factors Influencing Geographic Differentials in Homelessness: An Exploratory State‐Level Analysis

“…The study by Cobb‐Clark and Zhu () addresses the homelessness issue from a very different perspective than these other studies do. In particular, it investigates the long‐run actual employment consequences of experiencing homelessness during childhood rather than later in the life cycle.…”

“…The estimation procedure pays very close attention to the potential pathways linking homelessness during childhood to adult employment experiences. The estimations in Cobb‐Clark and Zhu () reveal that those persons who experience homelessness for the first time as children are less likely to be employed as adults. For women, this relationship is largely attributed by the authors to the lower educational attainment ultimately achieved by women, as well as to the higher degree to which they are welfare recipients, both in general and in the specific form of mental‐illness‐related disability payments, a circumstance that perhaps creates a welfare‐dependence state of mind.…”