Childhood homelessness and adult employment: the role of education, incarceration, and welfare receipt

This paper explores the long-term consequences of experiencing homelessness during childhood, useing data from the Journeys Home Project, which follows about 1,700 disadvantaged Australians experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity over a three-year period. The primary goal is to assess the importance of the potential pathways linking childhood homelessness to adult employment, comparing those experiencing homelessness for the first time as children to those who were never homeless as a child. For women, this relationship is largely explained by the lower educational attainment and higher welfare and pension receipt of those experiencing childhood homelessness. For men, higher rates of high-school incompletion and incarceration explain some of this link between childhood homelessness and unemployment.