Income mobility and family transitions for New Zealand using linked household survey and Census data – 2007 to 2020

This thesis investigates family transitions and income mobility byindividuals, families and households from 2007 to 2020. The analysis considers changes between the Household Labour Force Surveyand the 2013 Census, relying on the detailed family and householdstructure available in these two data collections. These two data collections are linked to income data to calculate summary measures ofthe income distribution.

The key contributions of this thesis are 1) analysing a novel databaselinking the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS) and the 2013 Census at the individual, family and household level; 2) providing descriptive analysis of two-period transitions between economic family unitsfrom 2007 to 2020 for a large representative sample of New Zealandhouseholds; and 3) providing descriptive analysis of two-period income distribution and mobility by family type from 2007 to 2020.

The key results of this thesis are as follows. For family transitions, transitions between family types are infrequent but progressively morecommon as the time period increases. For the two-period incomedistribution, income inequality is lower for all family types when comparing average income to the respective single-period income distribution. Sole parent females are experiencing steadily increasinginequality over the 2007 to 2020 period, whereas the other familytypes are broadly flat over this period. For two-period mobility, therank correlations for all family types steadily decrease as the time period increases. Single males and females have lower rank correlationsthan the other family types, indicating more income mobility for thesefamily types.