Journal of Labor Economics · 2023 · Marc K. Chan、Nicolas Hérault、Ha Vu、Roger Wilkins
Abstract
Many countries impose job search requirements on unemployment benefit recipients. Existing studies have mainly focused on the impact of incremental changes to requirements on the recipients. Australian reforms in 1995 saw groups of partnered welfare recipients newly subjected to job search requirements, allowing us to produce causal estimates of the effects on family welfare receipt of introducing such requirements. Using a quasi-experimental design and administrative data, we find large negative effects on welfare receipt for the mature-age partnered women targeted by the reforms and similar effects on welfare receipt of their partners, suggesting that family labor supply decisions were considerably affected.