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released: 16 Jul 2004

The purpose of this paper is to present aggregate and distributional data on the major forms of housing assistance provided both through government outlays and taxation expenditures.These include five major benefit areas: direct assistance provided through Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA), public rental housing rebates under the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement (CSHA), the Australian Government's First Home Owner Grant (FHOG), and indirect assistance through non-taxation of imputed rent for occupiers and capital gains tax exemption for home owners.This report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) is the Institute's contribution to the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute's (AHURI) research project 60098: a distributional analysis of the impact of direct and indirect housing assistance.While it covers a range of assistance types, the data presented in this paper are notcomprehensive due to the diversity of forms of assistance and the lack of information at thenational level on these benefits. The approach taken in this paper represents only onemethodology that can be employed, and it is important to recognise that other assumptionscould be used in estimating the value of assistance to households.

ISBN 978 1 74024 391 9; Cat. no. HOU 108; 136pp.; OUT OF PRINT

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Measuring the distributional impact of direct and indirect housing assistance

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Publication table of contents

  • Preliminary material (152K PDF)
    • Title and verso pages
    • Contents
    • List of tables
    • List of figures
    • Abbreviations and symbols
    • Acknowledgments
  • Sections
    • Overview (303K PDF)
    • Executive summary
    • 1. Housing assistance in Australia
      1. Background
      2. Analysis of the distribution of housing assistance in Australia
      3. Data sources
      4. Caveats on the approach used
    • 2. Housing assistance to renters
      1. Overview
      2. Assistance to private renters
      3. Assistance to public housing tenants
      4. Summary
    • 3. Housing assistance to home owners (299K PDF)
      1. Overview
      2. Direct assistance to home owners through the First Home Owner Grant
      3. Indirect assistance to home owners arising from the tax system
      4. Summary
    • 4. Distribution of direct and indirect assistance across tenures
      1. Overview of direct and indirect assistance
      2. Aggregated measure of direct and indirect assistance
      3. The distribution of direct and indirect assistance
      4. Summary
    • References
    • Glossary
  • End matter (285K PDF)
    • Appendix 1: Aggregate estimates of tax expenditures from time series data
    • Appendix 2: Methodology of estimating indirect housing assistance from
      the 1999 AHS data
    • Appendix 3: Methodology of converting income units to households
    • Appendix 4: Discrepancies between the 1999 AHS data and administrative data
    • Appendix 5: Interpreting estimates derived from the 1999 AHS
    • Appendix 6: Tables

Recommended citation

AIHW 2004. Measuring the distributional impact of direct and indirect housing assistance. Cat. no. HOU 108. Canberra: AIHW.