Evaluation of the Australian Wage Subsidy Special Youth ...

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2.1 Review of Australian wage subsidy evaluation evidence
The brief overseas review in the first chapter showed relatively few evaluations of wage
subsidies exist, and empirical evidence for wage subsidies is not well founded. As this
section will show, wage subsidy programs in Australia also have little publicly available
evaluation evidence. Microeconomic evaluation is selected, using individual data,
addressing the issue of whether the subsidy leads to better employment experience for
participants after the program ends. The evidence is limited to published items that can be
accessed by the public.
Only recent evidence is compiled, corresponding approximately to the period starting
with the 1980’s and onward, since this is the period of the later analysis. However it
becomes evident in reviewing the literature that in fact most programs only started within
the 1970’s, and publicly available evaluation work occurred mostly in the mid-1980’s
and l990’s. Paterson (1982) in discussing evaluation activities in Australia pointed out
that “…In Australia government involvement in the area of manpower programs is a
relatively new phenomenon. Experience with manpower program evaluation is therefore
limited.” (Paterson (1982): 1). The timing of this statement marked the general beginning
of Australian evaluation activities and publications.
Wage subsidies form only a part of the array of labour market programs available, and so
evaluation of these in turn forms only a small part of the existing Australian evaluation
literature available. Evaluation evidence for other program types such as training for
Australia can be found generally reviewed in Webster (1998, 1997a).
Although subsidised apprenticeships were available, for example CRAFT
(Commonwealth Rebate for Apprenticeship Full-time Training), these are not dealt with
as they are deemed to be mostly a training subsidy. 4 Also not covered are programs with
4 In support of this, in references such as Kesteven (1987) and Hoy (1983) they are categorized as
education programs. The design did allow for a small amount of on-the-job training. For example Merrilees
(1984) refers to wage subsidies in CRAFT for this reason, however the grand focus was apprenticeship
training.