Unemployment benefit

Calculates the unemployment benefit (Newstart Allowance) payable for individuals in the specified financial year(s), given each individual's income and assets, and whether they are married, have children, or own their own home.

unemployment_benefit(income = 0, assets = 0, fy.year = NULL,
  Date = NULL, has_partner = FALSE, has_dependant = FALSE,
  is_home_owner = FALSE)

Arguments

income	Numeric vector of fortnightly income for the income test.
assets	Numeric vector of the value of assets. By default, income and assets are both zero, thus returning the maximum benefit payable.
fy.year	A character vector of valid financial years between "2000-01" and "2020-21" specifying which financial year the allowance is to be calculated.
Date	(Date vector or coercible to such). An alternative to fy.year to specify the period over which the allowance is calculated.
has_partner	(logical vector, default: FALSE) Does the individual have a partner?
has_dependant	(logical vectpr, default: FALSE) Does the indvidiual have any dependant children?
is_home_owner	(logical vector, default: FALSE) Does the individual own their own home?

Value

The fortnightly unemployment benefit payable for each entry. The function is vectorized over its arguments, with any length-1 argument recycled. (Other vector recycling is not supported and will result in an error.)

Details

The income test for long-term employed persons above 60 happens to be the same as that for singles with dependants, so calculating the benefit payable for such individuals can be performed by setting has_partner = FALSE, has_dependant = TRUE.