More Pensioners, Less Income Inequality? The Impact of Changing Age Composition on Inequality in Big Cities and Elsewhere

As is the case in most developed countries, the population of New Zealand is ageing numerically and structurally. Population ageing can have important effects on the distribution of personal income within and between urban areas. The age structure of the population may affect the distribution of income through the life-cycle profile of earnings but also through the spatial-temporal distribution of income within the various age groups. By decomposing New Zealand census data from 1986 to 2013 by age and urban area, this paper examines the effects of population ageing on spatial-temporal changes in the distribution of personal income to better understand urban area-level income inequality (measured by the Mean Log Deviation index). We focus explicitly on differences between metropolitan and non-metropolitan urban areas. New Zealand has experienced a significant increase in income inequality over the last few decades, but population ageing has slightly dampened this trend. Because metropolitan areas are ageing slower, the inequality-reducing effect of ageing has been less in these areas. However, this urban-size differential-ageing effect on inequality growth has been relatively small compared with the faster growth in intra-age group inequality in the metropolitan areas

The Impact of Wage Subsidies on Jobseekers' Outcomes and Firm Employment

Wage subsidies are commonly used to assist disadvantaged jobseekers into employment. If effective they can contribute to reducing long-term benefit dependence. The study examines the impact of wage subsidies on assisted jobseekers and on the firms that employ them. It focuses on hiring subsidies granted over the period of January 2003 to December 2007 and outcomes up to December 2010, and draws on administrative and tax data held by Statistics New Zealand as part of the ‘Integrated Data Infrastructure’ prototype. Outcomes for assisted jobseekers are compared to those of comparable jobseekers using propensity matching methods. Similarly, propensity-matching is used to compare employment and earnings growth in firms that hire subsidised workers to growth in otherwise comparable firms. Overall we find that starting a subsidised job leads to significant employment and earning benefits for assisted jobseekers over several years. Subsidised workers are disproportionately hired into expanding firms, though we cannot determine whether the expansion would have occurred in the absence of the subsidy