The majority of people on the jobseeker and parenting payments are living in poverty while about a third of single parents are also below the breadline, according to a new study.
A report from the University of New South Wales and the Australian Council of Social Service, to be released on Wednesday, provides further insight into the demographics of 3 million people, including 761,000 children, previously identified as living in poverty in the 2019-20 financial year.
The Labor government awaits a separate report from the independent economic inclusion advisory committee, which was established to comment on the adequacy of welfare payments before the May budget.
The Acoss report uses the relative poverty line measure of 50% of median household income, meaning a single person living on less than $489 a week was in poverty. For a couple with two children, the poverty line was $1,027 a week.
It found 60% of people on the jobseeker payment, 72% of people on the parenting payment, and 34% of people on youth allowance lived in poverty.
The same was true for 34% of sole parent families, compared with 11% of people in partnered families with children.
The gendered aspect of poverty was demonstrated by the fact 18% of households where the main earner was a woman were below the breadline. The figure was 10% when the main earner was male.
Home ownership was also a key indicator: 20% of private renters and 52% of those in public housing were in poverty, compared with 10% for homeowners with a mortgage and 8% for homeowners without one.
Those on the youth allowance payment experienced deep poverty, living on average $390 a week below the poverty line, as did those receiving jobseeker ($269 a week below the poverty line) and parenting payment ($246).
While jobseeker is intended as an unemployment benefit, it is increasingly accessed by people with illnesses or disabilities, including some who are locked out of the disability support pension due to changes by successive governments.
Sixty-one-year-old Tracy Krupa, who lives in regional Victoria, has been out of work since losing her job in 2018.
Krupa lives on a farm with her husband, who receives the age pension. She said social security payments were “totally inadequate”, particularly for those with extra expenses due to health or disability.
She said she had been hospitalised for five months due to a severe bowel condition in 2021 and was subsequently diagnosed with cancer.
“When I got out of hospital, I started chemo, which for me was fortnightly treatment, which involved a 300km return trip, twice a week,” she said. “Right at the time when the … fuel prices went up. And then we had got hit with the cost-of-living increases, and interest rates. We got hit with a triple whammy.”
Krupa is still unable to work as she recovers from her bowel condition, meaning she is stuck on the jobseeker payment.
The Acoss chief executive, Cassandra Goldie, said the fact that a majority of people relying on unemployment payments and parenting payments lived in poverty showed the system was “totally inadequate to meet the essentials of life”.
Goldie said the report provided further evidence of the need for a “poverty reduction package in the May budget”.
The report covers a period before the pandemic and its early months in 2020, again building on past research that showed poverty briefly fell dramatically when income support was boosted through the coronavirus supplement. The ABS data analysed was compiled before the inflation spike and, in particular, the huge increase in rents in some areas.
On Tuesday two MPs launched a bipartisan push for an increase to welfare benefits and women’s advocates will meet in parliament on Wednesday to call on the government to reinstate parenting payment to thousands of single mothers.
In 2005 the Howard government changed welfare rules to see single parents dropped from the parenting payment to the lower unemployment benefit when their child turned eight. The Gillard government subsequently removed a “grandfathering” arrangement in 2011. Those changes are widely viewed as instrumental in increasing poverty rates among single mothers.
The finance minister, Katy Gallagher, told ABC Radio National this week the government was “looking at payments”. Gallagher said she was aware that women’s advocates were concerned about the Howard/Gillard era changes.
“The prime minister has said a number of times that every budget we go through, we will go through and look at what’s happening on the payment side,” she said. “That will feed into decisions we take in the budget.”
