The Policy Response to the Employment Task Force and Changing Patterns of Domestic Purposes Benefit Receipt: a Cohort Analysis

Moira Wilson

Benefit dynamics data provides an in-depth picture of what has happened to six successive cohorts of DPB (Domestic Purposes Benefit) recipients as they moved through the period of the Employment Task Force's, and subsequent, reforms.

Following a cohort of individuals through a period of policy reform ensures that any change in the experiences of the cohort is not the result of changes in its composition, other than those that result from the ageing of its members. By following several cohorts, the analysis also provides a tentative assessment (with specified reservations) of the possible impact of the various reforms by comparing the change in experiences for a cohort that has passed the date at which a reform was introduced with that for an earlier cohort that reached the same duration on benefit prior to the reform (difference in differences).

The analysis observes the impact of the part-time abatement regime, and of reciprocal obligations, on changes in declared earnings and on entry and exit from the benefit, for beneficiaries who are Māori and non-Māori, and with different ages of dependent children.