IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ozl/bcecrs/fs01.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Falling through the cracks: poverty and disadvantage in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Rebecca Cassells

    (Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin University)

  • Alfred Michael Dockery

    (Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, Curtin Business School)

  • Alan S Duncan

    (Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin University)

Abstract

The concept of disadvantage is one that invokes a number of connotations, including poverty, exclusion and deprivation. Generally disadvantage relates to a lack of resources and opportunity to achieve a basic standard of living. A number of Australian studies have sought to further understand the extent of poverty and disadvantage, many of them using a ‘standard’ measure of income poverty based on the proportion of people with equivalised household income below 50% of the national median. However, many households have access to far less income. Falling through the Cracks is the first in the Focus on the States series produced by the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC). Our intention with this report is to add a much needed perspective to the national debate around poverty by examining just how deep income poverty extends throughout Australian households and what factors exacerbate the incidence and depth of poverty. One of the key findings of our research is that more than one million people in Australia are living in severe income poverty, having access to household income of less than 30 per cent of the national median. This is a concerning number of people, of which more than 300,000 are children. Dimensions of poverty and disadvantage are many and are often inextricably linked. Factors that at the outset may drive people towards or into poverty can quickly become outcomes of poverty in themselves, exacerbating the incidence and depth of poverty an individual experiences and perpetuating the cycle of disadvantage. Who is falling through the cracks? Single person households, those renting, those with a disability, Indigenous and jobless households are the groups that are most exposed to deep and persistent poverty and disadvantage. These households are grossly over-represented in both ‘standard’ and severe income poverty measures and represent the highest risk groups for being persistently poor over extended periods of time. Poverty, especially deep and entrenched disadvantage, is a complex problem of course, but for one million people to be in severe poverty represents something of a failure of Australia’s social and economic systems to protect those in greatest need. However, it does represent an opportunity to rectify these disparities and develop inclusive and supportive policies and programs that prevent further slippage and enable these individuals and households to thrive rather than just survive.

Suggested Citation

  • Rebecca Cassells & Alfred Michael Dockery & Alan S Duncan, 2014. "Falling through the cracks: poverty and disadvantage in Australia," Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre Report series FS01, Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School.
  • Handle: RePEc:ozl:bcecrs:fs01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://bcec.edu.au/publications/falling-through-the-cracks/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Peter Saunders, 2017. "Housing costs, poverty and inequality in Australia," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(6), pages 742-757, August.
    2. Peter Saunders & Megan Bedford, 2018. "New minimum healthy living budget standards for low-paid and unemployed Australians," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 29(3), pages 273-288, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ozl:bcecrs:fs01. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Caroline Stewart (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/becurau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.