Australian Social Policy Journal no. 9 contains diverse research into social policy issues ranging from parental income support receipt and child mortality, work–life tension and community participation by people with disability in regional Australia. It also contains research on asset portfolios of older Australian households and household expenditure and newborn children, and includes a technical paper on the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey.
Articles in the journal:
Read an interview below taken from the Herald Sun newspaper, featuring Jason Brandrup and Paula Mance talking about their article ‘Changes in household expenditure associated with the arrival of newborn children’.
- Why did you undertake this study?
Surprisingly, although many researchers have looked at the costs of raising children, no one has specifically looked at how families change their spending when a baby arrives. We thought it was about time that somebody did so because it helps the government and the community understand how the needs of families change when babies are born.
The most substantial change in how families in our study spent their money was increased spending on health care, which would reflect the costs of pregnancy and childbirth. Families also spent a lot of money on clothing for their first-born babies, but not on the second or third-born babies—probably because these babies received ‘hand-me-down’ clothing from their older siblings. There were some results that were more surprising. Spending on takeaway food went up when second-born babies arrive—we are guessing that is because of time pressures on parents. We also found that spending on child care goes down with the arrival of a second-born baby, and we think that is probably because some families had less need of formal child care for their older child if mothers were home looking after their second-born baby.
- Does your study tell us anything about the Baby Bonus, and if so, is it true that some families were spending their Baby Bonus on plasma TVs, alcohol and holidays?
We couldn’t distinguish between how spending changes in response to families receiving the Baby Bonus and how spending changes in response to different family priorities after the arrival of a baby. Nonetheless, we can say that we found no evidence that the majority of families spent more on alcohol or holidays after receiving the Baby Bonus. Some families with third-born babies may have spent part of their Baby Bonus on electronic goods; however, these families weren’t typical of those giving birth in 2007 and 2008.