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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: 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.