Methodologies for analysing the impact of public policy on families

Government policies have both positive and negative impacts on New Zealand families. The challenge for policymakers is to anticipate and understand potential impacts. This report recommends methods of family impact analysis to ensure that policies and services achieve good outcomes for individuals, families and society.

Family-centred policy analysis increases our awareness of policy impacts in order to strengthen the positive impacts and to avoid unintended negative consequences.

This report recommends methods of family impact analysis that can be readily applied to all types of policies. It suggests beginning with a checklist screening approach, followed by one or more in-depth methods where appropriate:

• microeconomic analysis for analysing a wide range of policy problems

• gender analysis for issues relating to family functioning and the distribution of policy impacts within families

• impact assessment to provide a broad focus on potential costs, benefits and distribution of policy impacts

• family impact assessment for a family-specific policy analysis approach.

The report also focuses on methods to anticipate or predict policy impacts, as opposed to methods designed to measure or evaluate policy impacts.

The report concludes with guidance to policy analysts on the circumstances in which these approaches are best applied in order to assess different types of policy impact across families with different structures and at different points in the lifecycle.

The Families Commission encourages policy analysis which recognises the importance of families to the lives of individuals and wider society.