Australian welfare reliance has declined over the past decade, report says
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Version 0 of 1. The reliance on welfare by working age Australians has declined in the past decade, the country’s most comprehensive household survey has revealed, as the government prepares to overhaul the welfare system. The latest Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (Hilda) survey by the Melbourne Institute has followed the same households and individuals since 2001, interviewing 7,229 individuals from about 7,000 households for the latest survey. It shows a drop from 12% to 10.1% in the number of people as a proportion of the population who have more than half of their income come from welfare payments, and a drop from 7.1% to 6% in the number of people who have more than 90% of their income come from welfare. The numbers are modeled between 2001 and 2011 from people aged between 18 and 64 and reliant on welfare. The survey also shows a slight rise in the number of female breadwinners in coupled households. Labor has used the decline in reliance on welfare to attack the government, which announced changes to Newstart for people under 30 in the budget and have appointed former Mission Australia head Patrick McClure to deliver a review of the system. The treasurer, Joe Hockey, has previously labeled the welfare system “unsustainable” and said it could be argued it was unfair that taxpayers are supporting people on welfare. “Our duty is to help Australians to get to the starting line, while accepting that some will run faster than others … it is not the role of government to use the taxation and welfare system as a tool to “level the playing field”, he said in a speech last week. “We must use the levers of government to help those who are vulnerable and frail. A just and fair society never leaves anyone behind. But a just and fair society must not seek to penalise those who aspire to be better.” He dismissed the survey findings on Monday, with a spokeswoman saying the data only went up until 2011. "That mining boom is now disappearing and there is a growing reliance on welfare in the next decade," she said in a statement. "The priority is to get people back into the workforce so they never start a life on welfare." The report showed a steep decline in the number of people reliant on single-parent payments, from a peak of 43.8% to 32.6% in 2011. It also showed a shift to the Disability Support Payment (DSP) and away from other payments, with an increase in the percentage of the population reliant on it from 4.4% to 5.5%. The shadow minister for families and payments, Jenny Macklin, said the Hilda survey destroyed Hockey’s credibility. “This demonstrates that Joe Hockey has been falsely trying to create a crisis about Australia’s welfare system. This really is the final nail in the coffin of Joe Hockey’s credibility,” she said. “...There is no crisis in Australia’s welfare system. In fact, Australia has a very tightly targeted welfare system going to those who need it most and Labor will make sure that we defend that system so that support goes to those who need it.” The Hilda report also looked at long-term welfare reliance and found of those welfare-reliant in 2001, 75.8% were still reliant one year later, 56% three years later, 40.8% five years later, 32.4% seven years later, 25.7% nine years later, and 24.5% – nearly a quarter – ten years later. The Hilda report said reforms introduced in 2006, when John Howard was prime minister, may have contributed to the decline in the share of the population reliant on welfare and it was striking that only a minority of people had absolutely no dependence on welfare over the decade. There is also clear evidence of a declining reliance on the age pension, the proportion of income from the pension declining from 67.8% in 2001 to 59.9% in 2011. The report said despite the decline in reliance, the age pension was still the dominant source of income among the elderly, with 61.6% of people aged 65 and older obtaining more than half their income from it. The proportion of heterosexual couples in which the female is the breadwinner has also risen slightly, from 23% in the early 2000s to 25% by 2011, but women continue to do the bulk of unpaid work. The report said in 69% of working couples, males were the primary breadwinner and women were less likely to earn more money than their partner if the couple had dependent children. Women are considerably more likely to be unpaid carers than men, with 9.1% of females aged 15 and over providing unpaid care on an ongoing basis in 2011, compared with 5.8% of males aged 15 and over. |