Are the Determinants of Intergenerational Welfare Dependency Gender-specific?

This paper presents a brief analysis of differences in welfare participation by gender in New Zealand. Using longitudinal data (the Christchurch Health and Development Study), structural and reduced-form regression models are estimated. Our results indicate that females have an estimated intergenerational correlation coefficient that is more than double that for males. Possible reasons for this gender difference appear to be both a larger direct effect of parents’ welfare dependency and a greater indirect effect through the educational outcome of the female youth. Specifically, two household characteristics (parents’ welfare recipiency and larger family size) significantly and negatively influence young female adults in terms of their educational attainment and consequently in terms of their higher likelihood of welfare recipiency.