Yahoo Finance Shocking number of Aussies living in poverty: ‘Unacceptable’
The extent of Australia’s poverty crisis has been laid bare in a new report.
One in eight Aussies are living in poverty, with renters, single parents, the unemployed, those on income-support payments and those with a disability most at risk.
A report from the University of New South Wales and the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) found 60 per cent of people receiving JobSeeker and 72 per cent of people on the Parenting Payment lived in poverty in the 2019-2020 financial year.
Based on 50 per cent of median incomes, the poverty line ranged from $489 per week for a single person to $1,027 per week for a couple with two children.
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Those receiving Youth Allowance faced the deepest level of poverty, living on average $390 per week below the poverty line. Those on Jobseeker ($269 per week below) and the Parenting Payment ($246 per below) were also living well below the poverty line.
ACOSS CEO Cassandra Goldie said the report highlighted the need for a “poverty reduction package” in the May federal budget, including lifting income-support payments to at least $76 a day.
“The fact that a majority of people relying on unemployment payments and parenting payments are in poverty shows that current income-support payments for people who are unemployed and single parent families are totally inadequate to meet the essentials of life,” Goldie said.
UNSW Sydney Social Policy Research Centre director Carla Treloar said the depth of poverty experienced by people on Youth Allowance was “unacceptable”.
“Young people who are trying to start their working life are being left behind. And we see every day on campus the impact that this has on students who are struggling to pay for essentials while trying to complete their degrees,” Treloar said.
More Aussies homeless
The report comes amid the national housing crisis, with some families unable to find homes to live in and forced to live in tents and their cars.
One Sydney woman recently told Yahoo News how she unexpectedly ended up homeless and living in her car after she fell behind on her rent payments and was evicted from her home.
The 53-year-old full-time cook said she was unable to get out of arrears and had to make the “heartbreaking decision” to leave her cat behind.
Today it was revealed more than 122,000 Aussies experienced homelessness on census night in 2021, a spike of 5.2 per cent from 2016.
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