Care giving and employment: policy recognition of care and pathways to labour force return.

Abstract

Contemporary labour markets and the gendered relations of informal care giving in Australia set the context for this paper which explores changes in income support poficies that enable or constrain the 'choices' which care-providers seek to make. These may include: combining care giving and employment; withdrawing temporarily from the labour market; and making the transition to paid employment after care giving responsibilities for dependent or vulnerable family members cease. In particular, the paper explores the transition pathways taken by workforce and mature age people (predominantly women), who have been sole parents with dependent children, or low-income parents in couple families, or carers for vulnerable and dependent adults when their intensive care giving responsibilities cease. What are the factors which enable or constrain these employment transitions? These are very significant policy issues for individual and family well-being through the life-course; for workplace relations; and for overall levels of labour force participation in the context of a particularly risky life-course transition.

Introduction

To what extent are the contributions made by citizen parents and citizen informal carers (as distinct from citizen market workers) recognised in the Australian welfare regime (O'Connor, Orloff and Shaver 1999)? And the other side of that question: to what extent are citizen parents/carers able to forge combinations of care and employment; what are the constraints on return to labour force participation when caring responsibilities cease or become less intensive; and what are the transition pathways from care giving to employment, retirement or other modes of social participation, when caring responsibilities cease? The Australian welfare regime is increasingly characterised by the principle of mutual obligation for welfare recipients of labour force age (Shaver 2001). To what extent are givers care givers drawn into the obligations imposed on other jobless people? This paper explores the risks of labour force withdrawal and/or marginalisation experienced by people who provide unpaid care as parents of dependent children and carers for vulnerable adults (aged infirm parents, severely ill or disabled partners or friends, disabled adult offspring). These vast contributions to the well-being of families and the wider civil society, which are not rewarded by market wages or the non-wage benefits pertaining to employment, in particular paid annual leave and sick leave as well as superannuation entitlements, are very likely to incur the risks of low income, labour force marginality and difficulties with labour force return. This is especially the case for single parents and mature age people seeking to return to the workforce when they no longer have care giving responsibilities.

The current policy debate on ways to increase the rate of mature age employment and to reduce mature age labour force withdrawal is relatively silent on the several gendered pathways for mature-age people into and out of the labour force and difficulties with re-entry, with the notable exception of the work of Campbell and Charlesworth (2004) and Glezer and Wolcott (2000). To what extent and in what ways do periods of care giving either for children or vulnerable adults constitute a specific pathway out of labour force participation, which differs substantially from pathways such as retrenchment, severe illness, accident and disabling injury? Flowing from this research question, what specific policies and programs, at government and work-place levels, might be developed to take account of and support the range of employment and care giving combinations, which carers make, and their attempts to re-enter the labour force?

The first section of this paper examines the characteristics of Australia's care-recognition welfare regime, and the significant changes introduced over the last several years. The focus is on Parenting Payment, which provides support to sole parents and low income partnered parents with dependent children; and Carer Payment, which provides support to people providing constant care for a person requiring help and assistance because of disability or severe illness. The second section examines case-studies of the employment and care giving combinations pursued by low income parents with dependent children, including sole parents and the partners of unemployed or low-income spouses; and people caring for a severely ill or disabled family member or friend. The third section comments on future research priorities for building a much better understanding of labour force and income support combinations and transitions for people engaged in informal care giving through the life-course.

Recognising Care Giving in the Australian Welfare Regime

Since the early 1990s the feminist literature on welfare regimes has argued that the privileging of market/state relations in the mainstream welfare regime categorisations (Esping-Andersen 1990 and 1997; Castles 1997) has rendered invisible the informal, non-market provision of caring services carried out predominantly, but not entirely, by women within families, households and communities (Lewis 1992; Sainsbury 1994 and 1996; O'Connor, Orloff and Shaver 1999; Hobson 2000; Daly and Lewis 2000). Failing to take the fundamental matter of care-giving, non-market work and its policy treatment into account renders invisible much of the intimate, welfare-generating relationships which are an essential partner in the forging of market/state/family inter-connections.

One of the most influential contributions to recent theorisations of care is the work of Daly and Lewis who define the concept of 'social care' as:

   The activities and relations involved in meeting the physical and
   emotional requirements of dependent adults and children and the
   normative, economic and social frameworks within which these are
   assigned and carried out (2000, p. 285).

Their three dimensional conceptualisation of social care involves:

* Care is labour which involves consideration of whether care is paid or unpaid, formal or informal, and the state's roles in determining these and other boundaries, which are not fixed, but may be subject to significant policy shifts.

* Care is located within a normative framework of obligations and responsibility. Care tends to be initiated and provided under conditions of social, usually familial relations and responsibilities, making it inappropriate to consider the labour aspects of care alone.

* Care is an activity with financial and emotional costs which extend across public/private boundaries. The key analytical question is how the costs involved are shared, among individuals, families and within society at large. This may be through the pooling of the risks and costs of care-provision, through public policies which share the responsibilities of care through state-financed or state-subsidised service provision; or policies which expect that care will be delivered predominantly by family members and relatives sometimes, as in Australia, with the assistance of government income support, which, to varying extents, provides some legitimacy to care-giving.

Daly and Lewis (2000) note that social care lies at the intersections of state/family and state/market provision; covering formal and informal care; paid and unpaid care. They seek to understand the multiple relationships of care giving and care receipt within a policy regime framework, how at the micro-level of intimate life in families and households the distribution of care giving is determined, the conditions under which care is carried out and the state's role in affecting such conditions.

There are other feminist welfare regime analyses that focus on the policy treatment of the care provided by sole parents, asking: to what extent the complex of social policies, labour market policies and family-related employment benefits provides the capacity for sole parents to maintain and form an autonomous household? (O'Connor, Orloff and Shaver 1999). In a similar vein, Barbara Hobson (1994) argues that gendered welfare regime analyses should examine not only the relationships between state policies and labour markets, but also the ways in which policies define the responsibilities and subsequent policy treatment of sole parents. She asks: do different welfare systems base their policies for sole parent families on the expectation that sole parents (who are generally women) are either dependent or independent? If considered dependent: are they expected to be financially dependent on a former husband/partner or on the children's father; or are they eligible to receive government income support, treated in government policy as 'mother' until children are of a stipulated age? This latter discourse assigns a certain level of legitimacy (usually contested and contingent) to the principle of 'citizen mother/parent', a version of social citizenship, which differs from economic citizenship in that an autonomous household is able to be sustained outside of market participation. On the other hand, there are policy regimes which treat sole mothers as independent market participants, expected to maintain an autonomous household through their own workforce participation, treated as a 'market worker', once children have reached a stipulated age. And if they are expected to be independent as a wage-earner, are public policies available to support their workforce participation: paid maternity/parental leave; child care services; education, training and employment programs; tax credits or family payments which augment earnings from market work? If 'independence' as a paid worker is expected and enforced, to what extent are the conjoint demands and responsibilities of employee and parent recognised in social policy, or is the policy regime one based on the liberal precept of the atomised, independent worker, disembodied and without child care responsibilities?

A similar question should be asked with regard to policies for carers who are responsible for vulnerable adults. Are carers expected to be privately dependent on a (male) breadwinner or other family member? Are there income support arrangements which provide compensation for the costs (especially the income loss) incurred in care-giving, i.e. recognition of citizen carer (Ungerson 2000; Jenson and Jacobzone 2000)? Are informal carers expected to carry out the responsibilities of care giving without any income support and therefore expected also to be labour force participants? If the latter is the case, are there policies available such as respite care services and entitlements to flexible participation in the workplace, including carer leave, or is the policy regime one based on the liberal precept of the atomised, independent worker, without care giving responsibilities? Another possibility is that payments are made by governments to the person who requires care, enabling them to purchase care from either a relative, or through a formal care-provider (Ungerson 2000).

Two Case Studies of Care-Recognition: Parenting Payment and Cater Payment

Income Support for Sole Parents and Low-income Partnered Parents

The long-standing basis of income support policy towards sole parents in Australia from the early World War II period was the assumption that sole parents were mothers first and paid workers second (using Hobson's typology). Sole parents were not required to be available for paid work in order to retain eligibility for social security income support as long as they had dependent children. It was largely accepted since 1942 in the context of the development of Australia's post war welfare state that sole mothers would be first and foremost 'mothers': and treated as such in social policy. Widows pension was introduced nationally as part of the overall social security system in 1942, and provided support at the same rate as age pension to sole parent families formed following widowhood, divorce and the desertion of the husband. Eligibility for widows pension was defined broadly and extended not only to women who had been in a de-jure marriage, but also to those who had been in a recognised de-facto relationship for at least three years and whose husband had died. There was no work-test applied to this income support payment: it was not culturally or politically expected that sole mothers would be employed. In addition, another category of pension, Widows Pension Part B, was made available to widows without dependent children who were 50 years of age or more, following the logic of Widows Pension part A, that in this case older widowed women would not be expected to enter the labour force (Raymond 1987). Excluded from these benefits were sole parent families formed as a result of ex-nuptial birth, or women who had been in a marriage or a relationship but had themselves left the relationship. These women were not eligible for Federal Government support from the widows pension, but could apply to each State Government for support, which was less generous and more discretionary than the widows pension. A categorisation based on concepts of the deserving and the undeserving was operating: widows and divorced and deserted wives were eligible for widows pension, but other sole parents, single mothers and those who had themselves left a relationships, were reliant on State government support. But it was not really expected that sole mothers would be predominantly paid workers.

In 1973, following vigorous advocacy from women's groups, specifically the Council for the Single Mother and her Child, the Whitlam Labor Government (1972-75) introduced the Supporting Mothers Benefit, for which sole parents who were single mothers (i.e. where the family had been formed as a result of ex-nuptial birth) and all other sole mother categories not eligible for widows pension, were eligible. Supporting mother's benefit was paid at the same rate and under the same income testing conditions as widows pension, and as its name implies, its premise was that the sole mother was predominantly a mother, and not expected to be a paid worker. Eligibility for income support ended when the youngest child turned 16 or ceased to be a full-time student. However, eligibility for Widows Pension Part B was not extended to former Supporting Mothers when they reached the age of 50. Introducing supporting mothers benefit was a bi-partisan policy, since the Fraser Liberal/National Party Government extended the payment to sole fathers in 1978, renaming the payment Supporting Parents Benefit. This change signified that all sole parents, whether male or female, were to be treated first and foremost as parents. It was also relevant that men wereeligible, because the underlying logic was no longer the gender of the parent, but the fact of caring alone for a dependent child which conferred eligibility. In 1989 widows pension and supporting parents benefit were integrated as Sole Parent Pension and the previous division ceased to exist in social security policy. In amalgamating the two payments as sole parent pension, the Labor Government introduced the phasing out of Class B Widows pension for older women, signifying that that there would not be a designated category of income support for widowed or divorced sole mothers whose children were no longer dependent. Labour force participation was the expected activity for mature age women when they no longer had the care of dependent children.

A further amalgamation occurred in 1998, when the payment was renamed Parenting Payment, and became available to sole parents (male and female) and to partners of unemployed income support recipients and low-wage earners with dependent children (Whiteford 2001a). Income support for sole parents in Australia was based on the assumption that mothers and fathers caring for children alone were eligible to receive income support, and not expected to be employed until the youngest child turned 16, and eligibility was extended to low-income parents in couple families with at least one dependent child.

While this extension of income support was taking place, the welfare principle attached to support for parenting increasingly came into conflict from the mid-1980s with a discourse of the moral ambiguity of what was termed 'welfare dependency' and a less punitive discourse concerned with reducing poverty of welfare recipients. In this context, policies moved towards a citizen worker and away from a citizen parent model. Research during the late 1960s to the 1990s indicated that receipt of income support did not protect sole parent families from poverty, and that sole parent families, especially those headed by a woman, had the highest rates of poverty compared with all other family types. Social security income support may have provided the capacity to form an autonomous household, but without additional income from employment or from child support from the non-custodial parent, or both, it did not provide a level of income which could be described as adequate to maintain a reasonable standard of living (Harcourt 1969; Raymond 1987; Whiteford 2001a and 2001b).

Income Support for Carers

A specific income support payment for carers of adults, Carer Pension, was introduced in 1985 to replace both the wife's pension (then in the process of being phased out) and the spouse carer's pension, which had been introduced previously for men caring for a spouse in receipt of invalid or age pension who was in need of constant care and attention. Carer pension was more comprehensive in its coverage than both of the payments which it replaced, providing income support for people providing constant care (understood as the equivalent of a working day, every day) for a spouse, close relative, disabled offspring or friend. Renamed Carer Payment in 1996, the payment continues to provide income support for men and women unable to maintain paid employment because of full-time caring responsibilities. Recipients are permitted to engage in paid or voluntary work, education or training for up to 25 hours per week, but these activities are usually difficult to sustain because of the demands of full-time care (Jenson and Jacobzone 2000; Campbell and Charlesworth 2004).

Care giving of this nature is likely to be followed by problems of workforce reentry when the caring responsibilities cease. The international literature shows that the impact of informal care giving may involve withdrawal from the labour force or reduction in the hours of paid work (Jenson and Jacobzone 2000). The AMP. NATSEM Study on the Cost of Caring in Australia (2005) using data from the ABS Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers (2003) found that caring can extract a high price: the labour force participation rate for people with no caring responsibilities in 2003 was 67.9 per cent; for those with caring responsibilities, 56.1 per cent; and for primary carers, 39 per cent. As Daly and Lewis (2000) noted, care giving is itself labour, embedded within a normative framework of obligation, and incurs costs. The gendered nature of this life-course care provision is evident: in Australia, while 56 per cent of all care-givers, those who provide some measure of care for a spouse, parent, other relative or friend, are women, 70 per cent of primary care-givers, those who provide the most care, are women (Mears 1998), while most sole parents (83 per cent) are women.

Mutual Obligation and the Welfare-to-Work Regime

Policies for care giving have been drawn into the politics of obligatory labour force participation and mutual obligation. From the latter half of the 1990s welfare reform focused on enforcing obligatory employment in the social security system, originally with reference to unemployed people, but from the early 2000s the regime of mutual obligation was extended to sole parents and low income partnered parents in receipt of income support. Recipients of carer payment have not been incorporated into the mutual obligation framework, possibly because it is recognised that the intensity and constancy of their care giving responsibilities make labour force participation very difficult, if not impossible, and also because informal care is seen as increasingly necessary in an ageing population.

The policy and administration of the current welfare regime with respect to income support for most people of workforce age is based on the principle of mutual obligation, the expectation that welfare beneficiaries will 'pay back' their obligation to community and government through their social and economic participation, with priority given to market participation (McClelland 2002). Proposals to entrench the principle of mutual obligation in welfare administration were made in the Final Report of the Reference Group on Welfare Reform, Participation Support for a more Equitable Society (2000). The Reference Group was established by the Coalition Government to put forward proposals for welfare reform, in the context of what was defined as increasing welfare dependence, a condition viewed as personally, socially and financially deleterious. The Report spoke of various forms of social and economic participation satisfying the requirement of mutual obligation, including not only labour market activity, but also voluntary work and caring as legitimate forms of participation. However, it is evident from the recommendations of the Report that the favoured form of participation was market work and preparation for market work (Shaver 2000).

With regard to sole parents, who were characterised as increasingly welfare dependent, the Report, followed by the Coalition Government focused on expecting transition from full-time parenting to workforce participation in various combinations at different stages in the child's life. From 2003 sole parents and partnered parents in receipt of parenting payment, when their youngest child was aged 6-12, were required to attend an annual interview with Centrelink. They might be asked to complete a non-enforceable Participation Agreement at these interviews, but they did not have to agree to undertake activities. Parents whose youngest child was aged 13-15 were required to enter into a Participation Agreement and to undertake either a maximum of six hours of agreed activity per week (averaged over a six monthly period) or 150 hours of agreed activity over the six-month period. Agreed activities included paid employment, education and training. The time taken to look for work could be accepted as part of the hours of agreed activity as could voluntary and community work. In drawing up an agreement, Centrelink was obliged to take into account matters such as a person's health, education, the state of the local labour market, family and caring responsibilities, particularly where there was a disabled child, and travel time required (Welfare Rights Centre 2003). Eligibility for parenting payment would continue until the youngest child turned 16 years.

Radical changes to these mutual obligation or welfare-to-work conditions for recipients of parenting payment were announced in the Budget 2005-6, to be introduced in July 2006, which include:

* For sole parents: eligibility to receive parenting payment is retained until the youngest child is 8, when income support will be shifted to Newstart Allowance whose payment rates, income test, free area and taper rate are analogous to income support for unemployed people. This change comprises a lower rate of payment and more stringent income test compared with parenting payment, which will result in significantly higher effective marginal tax rates when parents enter employment or increase the hours of their employment (Harding et al 2005).

* For partnered parents, parenting payment eligibility will cease when their youngest child is aged 6, when income support will be shifted to the Newstart Allowance.

* After the youngest child is aged 6, parents must be involved in at least one of the following activities:

--looking for part-time work;

--engaged in part-time work (at least 15 hours per week);

--undertaking education or training;

--voluntary work

* When their youngest child is aged 8 and over, to remain eligible for income support the parent must be employed for at least 15 hours per week.

* Exemptions to this regime include: where the parent is caring for a disabled child; where the parent has a disability; parents caring for 4 or more children; parents who are fostering children.

This is a significant policy change, curtailing markedly the period of a child's life for which care giving is recognised in the income support system. But labour force re-entry is far from straight forward and unproblematic for parents, especially low income parents. Barriers to employment include: lack of educational qualifications and skills in demand; lack of access to affordable childcare; lack of access to transport; and living in areas where there are few available jobs; and most importantly for sole parents, the responsibility to care for children without the regular support of a partner (Eardley 2000; Walter 2002).

Care Giving and Employment Combinations Through the Life-Course: Implications for Employment Transition When Caring Responsibilities Cease

Studies of employment and income support combinations for sole parents and low income partnered parents show the constraints on employment noted by Walter (2002) and Eardley (2000). Nevertheless, even without radical welfare-to work policies, the employment rate for sole mothers increased considerably over the period 1983-2002, from 32.1 per cent to 47.8 per cent. Over the same period, the employment rate for partnered mothers increased from 42.1 per cent to 62.9 per cent (Gray et al. 2003). While the increases are of a similar magnitude, the size of the employment gap for sole mothers relative to partnered mothers increased slightly by 2002. The main difference was that while sole mothers' part-time employment increased substantially over the period, their full-time employment increased to 1989 and then fell to a level just slightly higher in 2002 than in 1983. For partnered mothers, both full and part-time employment increased steadily.

However, the difference between the rates of full-time employment for sole and partnered mothers in 2002 was not large: 21 per cent of sole mothers and 25 per cent of partnered mothers were employed full-time. In addition, the proportion of both sole and partnered mothers not in the labour force declined substantially, with 35 per cent of partnered mothers and 44 per cent of sole mothers not in the labour force in 2002. The main difference lies in the unemployment to population ratio: for sole mothers this increased from approximately 7 to 8 per cent, while for partnered mothers the ratio fell from 4 to below 3 per cent. There would appear to be a higher amount of active but unsuccessful job search among sole mothers, compared with partnered mothers. For sole mothers, the increased rate of part-time employment and relatively high unemployment to population ratio have been accompanied by receipt of income support as a key source of financial support for the family.

Australia's welfare regime caring-net was designed precisely for such purposes. It appears to be these trends which have given rise to the claim of sole mothers' welfare dependency, even as their overall employment rates, labour force participation rates and active job search rates have increased. Gray et al. (2003) explored possible explanations for these labour force trends among sole and couple mothers. Taking into account ages and number of children, educational attainment of the mother, proficiency in spoken English, region of residence and housing tenure, the authors found that the most likely explanation for the differences lies in the composition of the family and the nature of the labour market in which women are able to find employment. The increase in employment for sole mothers is greater among women with school age children, while the increase for couple mothers has been greater for those with pre-school age children. The authors state that the extra parenting demands placed on sole mothers make it more difficult for them to be employed while their children are young, and to be employed full-time. However, when the children are at school, they are more likely to move into part-time employment. Why the apparent preference for part-time employment? The growth of part-time jobs for women in a changed labour market over the last two decades made such jobs more readily available to both sole and partnered mothers, but partnered mothers are slightly more successful in accessing full-time jobs. It is more difficult for sole mothers without the assistance of a co-resident partner to care for their children and be in full-time employment, juggling the demands of both on their time and energy (Walter 2002). Such explanations are inconsistent with the claim of welfare dependency.

What are the implications for workforce return for sole parents? A comprehensive study in the early 1990s explored the pathways of a sample of female sole parents over a period of nine to twelve months after their receipt of sole parent pension (as it was then called) ceased when their youngest child turned 16 (Shaver et al. 1994). The key findings were that 32 per cent of the sample were employed and not in receipt of any income support; a further 10 per cent were combining part-time employment with income support; 31 per cent were unemployed and reliant on unemployment income support; 25 per cent were reliant on another type of income support, eg disability or age pension; while 2 per cent had other sources of income, including support from a partner. Overall, 42 per cent had some form of employment earnings; and 56 per cent were in receipt of income support without employment earnings. The most significant factors affecting pathways either to employment or income support were employment and employment-related experience in the preceding five years; having had contact with a Jobs Education and Training (JET) adviser; and having participated in one or more training programs (Shaver et al. 1994). Women who moved successfully to employment and received no income support had all been in paid work in the five-year period before the transition; and those combining part-time employment with income support also had longer than average experience of employment prior to the transition. The majority of women fully reliant on income support had not been in paid employment in the five years before their sole parent pension ceased. Participation in training was also strongly related to successful employment pathways. Women who were unemployed 12 months after the cessation of their eligibility for sole parent pension stated that the barriers to their employment included: their age; the length of time spent outside the labour force; lack of work experience; lack of skills or education required for the available jobs; and the lack of available jobs. For women reliant on a pension for long-term income support, the main factors were age, disability or ill health. This study underscored the importance of education, training and labour market programs to facilitate the initial move into employment, to extend the hours of employment and improve the quality of and rewards from employment.

Using more recent data, a submission by the Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment and Workplace Relations Inquiry into Increasing Participation in Paid Work notes that five years after losing eligibility for parenting payment, 51 per cent of former recipients remained on income support (FaCS, 2003). This is an indication of the barriers to mature age women returning to the labour force: lack of recent employment experience, lack of the education and skill qualifications required for the available jobs after periods of time spent fulfilling care giving responsibilities, and employer bias against recruitment of older workers (Encel and Studencki 2004).

Employment rates for partnered mothers in receipt of parenting payment are considerably lower than for sole parents, with only 10 per cent employed (Flateau and Dockery 2001). How might this be explained? Since the early 1980s there has been an increase in the proportion of working age couples where neither partner is employed. Bradbury (1995) explains this as largely a consequence of increased joblessness among men, and the tendency for their wives also to be jobless, a concentration of workforce disadvantage in families, and in regions. The partners of unemployed men face additional barriers to employment: mismatch between their education and training qualifications and the availability of suitable job opportunities, compounded in some cases by women's deeply held concerns about contravening the male breadwinner norm when their husbands are suffering the stigma and demoralisation of unemployment.

Turning to the later years of the life-course, Campbell and Charlesworth (2004) identify significant tensions for carers in managing paid work and care giving for elderly, disabled or ill parents, spouses, friends or adult children. Among carers not currently employed, about 40 per cent said that they would like to have paid work but saw formidable barriers to employment, including lack of alternative care arrangements, difficulty in arranging their working hours, loss of skills from being out of the workforce, and their age. The authors state:

"The impact of ceasing or reducing paid employment in order to perform informal caring can extend well beyond the actual or intended period of caring. In particular, there can be substantial costs and significant barriers for carers trying to re-enter the workforce after a break in employment due to caring." (p. 37-38)

Conclusions

This paper has explored the ways in which the Australian welfare regime provides income support for givers care givers at two stages in the life-course: parents caring for dependent children; and people providing care for seriously ill or disabled family members and friends. It concludes that while a reasonably comprehensive caring-net was established from World War II, and much extended from the mid 1970s providing income support for caters of dependent children and vulnerable adults, from 2002 there was a radical shift bringing the system of income support for dependent children into the welfare-to-work agenda of compulsory employment. The paper demonstrates that the life-course dual responsibilities of providing care and remaining in or re-entering employment are essentially gendered: women are the major carers for vulnerable young, old and disabled family members, and are the people most likely to withdraw from the labour force, or reduce their hours of employment in order to fulfil their care giving responsibilities. The major constraints on care givers remaining in employment, usually part-time, while they are providing care and returning to employment when their intensive care giving responsibilities cease include: lack of education and skills qualifications for the jobs which are available; their age and the way in which age is perceived by employers as a significant liability in the employment stakes; their health and employment capacities; the loss of skills due to long periods spent outside the labour force; scarcity of suitable jobs. So little is known in Australia about the gendered pathways out of the labour force; so little is known about life-course transitions when women and men seek to re-enter the labour force in mature age; so little is known about pathways into employment, retirement or receipt of other forms of income support after eligibility for parenting payment and carer payment ceases. With regard to the economic and social well-being of the people involved, and the well-being of their families, particularly those for whom care is provided, and with regard to current policy deliberations designed to increase overall levels of labour force participation, such questions must become the focus of intensive research to inform policy debates.

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Bettina Cass, Social Policy Research Centre, University of NSW