Poverty in Australia increases to 1 in 7 people, according to report
The number of people living in poverty in Australia has increased to 1 in 7, according to a new report released today—at the start of Anti-Poverty Week.
As many as 14.2% of the population—or 3.7 million Australians—were living below the poverty line in 2022–23, according to the "Poverty in Australia 2025: Overview" report released today.
The report, from the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) and UNSW Sydney-led Poverty and Inequality Partnership, uses the latest available data from the Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey.
These latest data mark an increase from 12.4% of the population—or 1 in 8 people—living below the poverty line in 2020–21.
The study also found the poverty rate for children is 1 in 6, equaling 757,000 children.
"This research shows that 1 in 7 people are now living in poverty. This is unacceptable in one of the wealthiest countries in the world," says Dr. Yuvisthi Naidoo, Senior Research Fellow at UNSW's Social Policy Research Center.
"The rate of people living in poverty decreased in 2020 due to the temporary doubling of JobSeeker during COVID," Dr. Naidoo says.
"But that has sharply risen above pre-pandemic levels due to the removal of COVID payments and rising housing costs," she says.
"The steep increase in rents in recent years has had a particularly severe impact on people with the lowest incomes."
The report found from June 2021 to June 2023, the median advertised rent for units rose from $486 per week to $680 in Sydney (40%), from $395 to $528 in Melbourne (34%) and from $394 to $554 in Brisbane (41%).
The proportion of low-income renters (the lowest 20% of earners) spending more than 30% of their income on rent—known as rental stress—increased from 52% in 2020–21 to 57% in 2022–23.
UNSW Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Attila Brungs says the numbers are a stark reminder that poverty remains one of Australia's most pressing challenges.
"This report is sobering but it also strengthens our resolve to drive our strategic aspiration, through our teaching and innovation, to deliver benefits and improvements for all individuals, across every part of society," Prof. Brungs says.
"Even our work on improving productivity tackles the broader challenge of ensuring that prosperity is shared by everyone, not just a few."
UNSW Vice-President, Societal Impact, Equity & Engagement, Professor Verity Firth says the report underscores the urgency of acting now.
"Our focus is on ensuring this evidence leads to change—towards tangible improvements for individuals, families and communities across the country," Prof. Firth says.
"Through our work with ACOSS, we aim to help shape fairer, evidence-based policies to reduce disadvantage and poverty in Australia, leading to better life outcomes for a significant group of Australians."
ACOSS CEO Dr. Cassandra Goldie says the findings show much greater action is needed to tackle poverty.
"While the government has taken some steps to reduce the number of people living in poverty, including advocating for minimum wage increases and delivering small increases to JobSeeker and Rent Assistance, and payment reform for single parents, it must do much more," says Dr. Goldie.
"The government must fix woefully inadequate income support payments, set targets to boost social housing stock and commit to full employment," she says.
"It should also adopt time-linked targets for poverty reduction and track progress."
The report found the poverty line, based on 50% of median household after-tax income, is $584 a week for a single adult and $1226 a week for a couple with two children.
People in households below the poverty line had household incomes averaging $390 per week below the line.
Families with children in poverty were on average $464 below the poverty line.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday October 20, @12:07AM (15 children)
How's that even possible, with all that advanced technology the capitalism has at hands? Is Australia lacking natural resources to sustain all of its population moderately?
Or is it just mismanaged by ignorancy to imbalance? And voters not fixing that, in a democratic country?
Or, some other foul play on people proceeded?
So, where the wealth has gone, really?
Seriously, it's 1/3 of world uranium trade we talk about, for example.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20, @12:15AM (3 children)
The alpha always eats first. Everybody knows that
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20, @12:47AM (1 child)
Usually resolved by eating/decapitating the rich. Seems there was a long time since there was a revolution to clean out a bit of dead weight at the top ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 21, @02:10PM
Eh, just restarts the cycle. The nouveau riche become the same animal, reliable as the sunrise
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20, @01:11AM
FTFY.
(Score: 5, Touché) by krishnoid on Monday October 20, @02:10AM
Rent-seeking, literally.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by epitaxial on Monday October 20, @03:01AM (1 child)
Governments are bought and paid for by the rich. If they fuck up and drive a company into the ground it gets bailed out by tax payers. Companies pay people a pittance and then encourage employees to apply for government benefits. Some voters aren't smart enough (or have dogma running so deep) that they don't understand their taxes are subsidizing corporate poverty wages.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20, @03:12AM
Voters are bought by the bread and circuses they provide. Whaddya gonna do?
(Score: 5, Touché) by driverless on Monday October 20, @04:12AM (1 child)
It's all relative. "Poverty" in Australia is comfortable middle-class in most of Africa.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Monday October 20, @01:20PM
Most of the immigrant/invaders in Aus are from India and Asia in general not Africa but its still a pretty accurate comparison.
(Score: 2) by namefags_are_jerks on Monday October 20, @07:40AM (2 children)
Australia's great social success was making being a Wealthy ScabC*nt thoroughly inclusive and democratized. No more Boys Club having an exclusive access to the Poor's wage-slavery -- we're allowing 'The Aspirationals' (Regular Middle-class who live to be Upper Middle-class) to go dancing on the backs of the bruised as well! \o/
A Real Australian has /three/ Ford Ranger SUVs parked in the street for free outside their house.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 21, @02:37AM (1 child)
Is that the same "free" as in free healthcare?
(Score: 3, Informative) by namefags_are_jerks on Tuesday October 21, @03:04AM
"Free" as in "haven't been caught yet". We're an island of convicts, remember.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Kell on Monday October 20, @08:01AM (1 child)
Hello, Australian here: It's pumped off-shore to foreign owners of infrastructure and resources. Our fucking politicians on both sides sold us out for 30 pieces of silver. They made out like barons while the rest of us were reduced to renters in our own country. The pendulum will swing and we will not forget who is responsible.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 21, @02:53AM
It's a common story. After visiting Costa Rica this year and spending freely on activities, thinking it was helping the locals (somewhat), I discovered through conversations with staff that the boat, the resort, more or less everything, is owned by foreigners. The money we spent was going to a guy in Arizona. After that I have to tell you, my willingness to spend money dropped to zero. Fuck that, I can overpay and exploit the locals at Disneyland.
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Tuesday October 21, @03:39PM
Capitalism? Australia is a socialist country.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20, @02:22AM (2 children)
Sounds to me like 1 in 7 need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. We need to ALWAYS crush the bottom 1 in 7 to encourage them. Pour motiver les autres.
(Score: 4, Touché) by sgleysti on Monday October 20, @03:28AM
God loves the poor. That's why he created so many of them.
(Score: 2, Funny) by DECbot on Monday October 20, @04:48PM
We'll start seeing some real progress when it gets to 1 in 6. At that point we can start making the bootstraps shorter. When it's finally gets to 1 in 4 or 1 in 3, we won't even need bootstraps anymore. The serfs will envy the working poor and fight them for
breadcake!cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 1) by fen on Monday October 20, @03:36AM
That's what matters. Everyone is just an ego anyways (except me).
(Score: 4, Funny) by ikanreed on Monday October 20, @04:14AM (1 child)
They should spend another 20 billion on never receiving a submarine from the US
(Score: 3, Funny) by atwork on Monday October 20, @04:45AM
The US will sell a couple of submarines to Australia for only 50% more than they pay for them, and they'll throw in the commanding officers for free.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jb on Monday October 20, @08:50AM
In response to this report, the government will no doubt make some hollow promise that will never amount to anything. It's happened so many times before (regardless of which party happens to be in power at the time).
Perhaps I'm just old, but reading those figures immediately brought to mind Bob Hawke's famous promise from the 1987 election campaign that "by 1990, no Australian child will live in poverty".
Almost 40 years on and we're still waiting...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Monday October 20, @09:20AM
From the F**ing Report
> we set a benchmark for the adequacy of household incomes of one-half (50%) of the median or ‘middle’ household disposable income. This is the ‘poverty line’
Based on this mangling of statistics, poor people can be getting richer (higher income) but average Australians are getting richer more quickly resulting in an increase in the number in so-called "poverty".
I haven't gone through the report in detail to see if this is the case, I just note there is room for bullshit.
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Monday October 20, @01:09PM (4 children)
Isn't this kind of meaningless?
Let's say we define poverty as the bottom seventh of income, then write a shocking expose that 1 in 7 are in poverty. Thats basically the story, isn't it?
Furthermore its really a measure of punitive taxation. Rich folks can play games with offsetting and carry forwards and all manner of tax dodges. "Working poor" cannot so they sometimes pay more tax. Lets say you're a house flipper in Aus and you buy a $5M house on Dec 31 last year and don't sell it for a capital gains profit at $6M until Jan 1 next year, to wildly simplify things. Your income this year is $0 therefore you're in poverty. But not all house flippers are poor and if you make $1M every other year flipping houses then you're averaging $500K/yr which is pretty good. Until the housing bubble pops of course.
Median income in Aus is about $1400/week (those are Aus dollars, remember a can of coke or pepsi is like $5 Aus at the vending machine so they're a rather inflated poor country, incomes look high compared to USA, but expenses are higher). Their minimum wage works out to $25/hr for full timers with benefits and $32 for peeps with no benefits.
This works out suspiciously to the lowest paid minimum wager no benefits worker in Aus working part time at 20 hrs/week is around the 1/7th line. My guess is there's a large number of retail workers and similar working part time creating a huge bump of people around $700/wk.
Median rent is $650/wk so the poorest part timer people in Aus can get a roommate (or two or three) and live in a 50th percentile apartment if they want to, which seems ridiculous. Aus property prices seem hyperinflated so ownership is out of the question.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday October 20, @01:17PM (2 children)
Here's a relative national wealth comparison.
My kid went to a bowling alley to play some games with his friends, hangout, etc. A can of Pepsi from the vending machine is $1.75 and we drove past a Panda Express hiring stereotypical teen fast food employees at $25.
So the metric in the USA is a minimum wage part time McJob worker in the USA earns about 14 cans of diet coke or whatever per hour.
In Aus, no benefit minimum wage is $32 and I've heard vending machine cost is $5 so they can only earn about 6 cans of diet coke per hour. So low income people (not necessarily poor) are about 133% richer in the USA than in Aus.
From talking to my former coworker the rents are much lower, property cost is much higher, food is much more expensive.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20, @09:31PM
> ... the rents are much lower, property cost is much higher, food is much more expensive.
And all the critters are out to get you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 21, @10:59PM
As long as you can live off soda it's all good bro.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday October 22, @01:39AM
As bad as US inflation has been, it's been slightly worse in Australia (and the UK). That's entirely the fault of officeholders; inflating the currency causes its value to fall. 1 $AU = 0.65 $US. My recollection is they used to trade at parity. 1 British pound = 1.34 $US; about 50 years ago the pound was about 4.5 US$.
Measuring poverty as below 50% of median is, as you point out, somewhat bogus. It does compensate for the decline in the value of money, but ignores the fact that as a society becomes richer the ratio of the top to the bottom increases. The rental stress measurement increase does seem to be a valid problem.
Australia claims 1 year CPI increase of 3%, which is not bad, PPI 3.4%, and housing 4.5%. The housing price index rising faster than CPI suggests increasing demand, possibly due to immigration. The housing numbers are at odds with the 40% increase for 2 years given in the summary. Alas, I'm not comparing the same years: The summary is for 2021-2023, the government data is the last 12 months.
Overall, it seems like things could be better but they're not particularly bad.