Children with Jobless Parents: National and Small Area Trends for Australia in the Past Decade

This paper examines national and spatial trends in the number and proportion of children with jobless parents during the past decade. At the national level, we find that the number of dependent children living in households where no parent had a job fell from around 756,000 in 1995-96 to around 684,000 in 2005-06. This reflects the increasing employment rates in Australia. While there were across-the-board falls in the number of such children by age group, the sharpest decreases occurred for 0 to 4 year old children. The proportion of all dependent children living in jobless households also fell, from 15.6 per cent in 1995-96 to 13.8 per cent in 2005-06. Despite this progress, however, one in every 7 dependent children in Australia in 2005-06 still lived in a household where no parent had a job. Our spatial analysis, of 1049 small areas, indicated that in three-quarters of the areas considered - covering 80 per cent of all children - the risk of children living in a jobless family fell between 2001 and 2006. Particularly positive is our finding that just over one-quarter of Australian children lived in areas where the risk of children being in jobless families fell by more than 4.1 percentage points between 2001 and 2006. Just over half of Australian children lived in areas where the risk of being in jobless family declined during the five years, although by less than 4.1 percentage points. However, gains were not equally spread across Australia. Some 5.5 per cent of Australia's children lived in areas where the risk of being in a jobless family actually increased by more than 3.4 percentage points between 2001 and 2006. Almost a further 15 per cent of children lived in areas where the risk of being in a jobless family still increased during these five years, but by less than 3.4 percentage points