Summary
Welfare is a concept that extends beyond support payments and services—it encompasses the broad range of individual, social, political and environmental factors that can influence a person’s wellbeing. We need accurate, reliable data if we are to understand how these factors interact. The AIHW understands welfare as a concept that extends beyond the welfare systems, and one that affects wellbeing as illustrated by the diagram below.
As the characteristics of the Australian population change, understanding current and emerging societal shifts behind this change is crucial to appropriately and effectively deliver health and welfare services. Data are essential to understand how people engage with and navigate welfare services, and are useful for planning, implementing and delivering services. The ability to link data across different services helps in understanding pathways and relationships between health and welfare.
In the current data landscape there is an increased recognition of the importance of using data to improve outcomes for the population, while assuring privacy and security of data. The AIHW has a pivotal role in producing and reporting data to improve the wellbeing of Australians and, where possible, investigate the interrelationships.
The AIHW also compares outcomes for different population groups, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, people living in remote areas, older people, people with disability, people with mental illness, children in the child protection and justice systems, and prisoners.
However, gaps exist where there are no national data currently available or where data collected are not comprehensive. In the context of welfare data, there are gaps in some areas, including:
- measurement of demand for welfare services—for example, unmet demand for specific welfare services, people who ‘fall through the cracks’ in the welfare systems
- details about types of welfare services accessed—for example, supports provided under consumer-directed care models for aged care, services funded by non-government organisations
- pathways through the welfare systems—for example, referral pathways, how people transition between different services and across different ‘systems’
- outcomes for people who receive welfare services—for example, outcomes of aged care, the relationship between recidivism and social assistance.
A key focus of the AIHW is to fill data gaps related to health and welfare—working with data providers to enhance existing collections or create new ones. For example, the AIHW is using a longitudinal researchable database on income support payments and characteristics to examine the long-term welfare outcomes and transitions for vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.
This report highlights some interesting discussions and analyses across different areas of welfare in Australia. It also draws attention to areas where data and its use can be improved. The articles in the report illustrate that it is not just about having the data, but what is done with the data and how it can be used to improve health and welfare services to individuals, families and communities and achieve better outcomes.
Australia’s welfare indicators summarise the performance of welfare services, track individual and household determinants of the need for welfare support, and provide insights into the nation’s wellbeing more broadly.
Based on trends over 10 years, Australia is doing well in a number of areas:
- The proportion of people aged 20–24 who completed Year 12 or a non-school qualification rose from less than 85% in 2009 to 90% in 2018.
- Many crime rates fell between 2008–09 and 2017–18, including:
- the proportion of people who experienced physical assault (from 3.1% to 2.4%)
- the proportion of households that experienced malicious property damage (from 11% to 5.1%).
- Between 2006 and 2016, the proportion of Indigenous households that were overcrowded (that is, require 1 or more extra bedrooms) fell from 14% to 10%.
We are not doing as well in a number of other areas:
- More low-income rental households are in housing stress. In 2017-18, 43% of these households spent more than 30% of their gross income on housing costs, up from 35% in 2007–08.
- In 2018, 25% of unemployed people aged 15 and over had been looking for work for more than a year—up from 15% in 2009.
- In 2017–18, 5.2% of homelessness services clients experienced homelessness more than once within the reporting year—up from 4.2% in 2013–14.
A lack of social mobility (a shift in a person’s socioeconomic position) imposes costs on society, including the squandering of people’s talents, and undermining productivity and economic growth. Social mobility is likely lower in Australia than in some developed countries (mainly Scandinavian and Nordic countries) and higher than in others (most notably the United States).
Research and data on the passing of disadvantage (and advantage) from one generation to the next is important for developing a better understanding of how social mobility operates in Australia. This includes examining intergenerational disadvantage through the lens of earnings and welfare receipt.
- How much a parent earns can influence how much their children will earn when they enter the workforce. Greater persistence in earnings across generations can result in less social mobility, and tie children’s socioeconomic position to that of their parents’.
- Intergenerational welfare receipt is a broad marker of intergenerational disadvantage, and reflects not only a lack of income, but also low levels of wealth, poor health, inadequate housing and limited aspirations.
- Findings from several studies examining earnings and welfare receipt across generations show that Australian parents pass some part of their social and economic position on to their children.
- The emerging Australian evidence hints at key pathways through which intergenerational disadvantage may be occurring—for example, family structure, parental disability and labour supply decisions. However, the focus of further inquiry will be driven by available data.
- Longitudinal studies and administrative data help in understanding social mobility in Australia, but investigating intergenerational disadvantage is challenging and data intensive—having access to richer and more varied data sources would provide a deeper understanding of intergenerational disadvantage.
- Families, labour markets, public policy and the broader national context shape the extent to which children’s opportunities and outcomes depend on their family background.
- It is important move beyond benchmarking exercises, and to translate Australian evidence on intergenerational disadvantage into effective policy design.
Australia’s social security system aims to support people who cannot fully support themselves through income support payments and other services. It is an important part of the larger network of services and assistance provided by governments and non-government organisations to improve the wellbeing of Australians.
- Over the past 2 decades, there has been a notable fall in the number of people aged 18–64 receiving income support—down from 2.6 million in 1999 to 2.3 million in 2018. Put another way, in 1999, 22% of Australians aged 18–64 received income support, but this fell to 15% in 2018.
- In 2018, almost 3 in 4 income support recipients aged 18–64 had been on a payment for 2 or more years. For people aged 25–49 who were receiving income support payments in 2009 analysis shows that long-term receipt of payments is common—more than half (56%) of these people were receiving payments 9 years earlier in 2000, and almost two-thirds (64%) were receiving payments 9 years later in 2018.
- People receiving Disability Support Pension, Carer Payment or parenting payments tend to be long-term income support recipients. While people receiving unemployment payments tend to stay on the payment for relatively short periods, there are some people who stay on the payment for longer periods.
- The types of payments received have changed considerably over the past 2 decades. There has been a rise in the proportion of income support recipients receiving unemployment payments, Disability Support Pension and Carer Payment, and a fall in those receiving parenting payments. This pattern has been particularly notable among women, and often is related to policy changes regarding parenting payments, Age Pension eligibility and closure of various partner payments and allowances.
Around half of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians aged 15–64 received an income support payment in 2016. By looking at long-term patterns—including people’s movements on and off income support, and across different payment types—the analysis provides new insights into Indigenous Australians’ receipt of income support, including whether people can be considered ‘reliant’ on these payments.
- The proportion of Indigenous Australians aged 15–64 receiving income support payments fell from 50% in 2002 to 47% in 2007, and then increased to more than 51% in 2016.
- In 2016, income support receipt was lowest in Major cities (45%) and highest in Remote and very remote areas (56%).
- Indigenous Australians aged 20–39 were the most likely to be receiving income support payments—around 60% of Indigenous people in this age group were receiving income support payments, compared with 26% of 15–19 year olds and 48% of 55–59 year olds.
- Means and asset testing can reduce the amount of payment received. Income support reliance measures the proportion of the maximum payment received over a particular period. In 2016, more than half (56%) of Indigenous Australians on income support received 90%-100% of the maximum payment, up from 45% in 2002.
- Pathway analysis of data followed a cohort of Indigenous Australians who received income support payments in 2002 over a 15-year period to 2016. Almost 1 in 5 (19%) of the 2002 cohort had left income support by 2014 and not returned by the end of 2016.
The Australian economy is responding to an ageing population and a shift towards service industries. Increasing automation in jobs across a range of industries may have further implications for the future of work. In a changing economy it is critical to understand which skills can lead to greater employment opportunities. Analysis of the skills involved in current Australian jobs and how these are changing over time provides valuable information for future change and may help to minimise skills gaps.
Estimates of the potential impacts of automation on employment vary widely, with a number of studies producing different predictions. While some jobs may be lost to automation, other jobs will be created, and a key challenge for current and future workers is to be flexible and able to acquire new skills as tasks within jobs change. This points to the need for planning, financing and delivering reskilling and job-transition programs.
- Occupations projected to grow in the 5 years to 2023 include Professionals, and Community and personal service workers. Occupations projected to decline include Contract, program and project administrators; Secretaries; Personal assistants; Information officers; and Bank workers.
- According to an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study, 70% of retrenched workers regain employment within 1 year, and 80% within 2 years. Women, older workers, less-educated workers and casual and part-time workers have a significantly lower chance of finding new employment within 2 years.
- In Australia, the OECD found that 10.6% of jobs are at high risk of automation and a further 25% may change substantially in the way work is done, suggesting that ‘job change’ will be as important in managing the workforce impacts of automation as ‘job loss’.
- Analysis of the amount of time workers spend on different tasks shows that, on average, Australian jobs experienced 9.3% change between 2011 and 2016. Higher skilled occupations, middle-aged workers and urban workers are experiencing greater task change than other groups. Occupations with the least task change are most susceptible to redundancy and business failure.
- In addition to changing jobs, new technology is creating new jobs—some of these result from combining tools and techniques from across different industries in novel ways, creating new fields of expertise, as well as hybrid jobs.
- The Department of Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business is developing tools to make it easier for Australians to identify their skills and see how they transfer across occupations.
The history of disability services and statistics in Australia is marked by a collaborative interplay of ideas, national policy development and national data. Reflecting on these practices is important at a time of significant change in the disability services and data landscape.
The thinking about disability and attitudes towards people with disability have changed since the early 20th century in many parts of the world. In Australia, there was a growing recognition of the needs of war veterans and people injured in industrial accidents, with a related querying of the previous institutional and charity models of service. By the end of World War 2, support for people with disability was increasingly accepted as a social responsibility. Current disability policy focuses on social and economic participation outcomes, inclusion and choice.
- Ideas about disability itself and about the nature of appropriate supports have been driven chiefly by the efforts of people with disabilities and their advocates and families, which have been strengthened by international advocacy and the work of organisations such as the United Nations.
- With changes to policies and service provision in Australia, national data collections have been developed in collaboration with those driving and implementing change. In turn, improved data and statistics have enabled policies to be reviewed, refined and improved.
- Support services for people with disability in Australia have evolved over time, culminating in the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in 2013. The NDIS replaced a system that had been framed around service ‘types’ and service providers as grant recipients, with one that considers individual needs of people with disability.
- The NDIS has the potential to improve our understanding about disability in Australia and the related support needs, how they are met and with what outcome. However, there is a need for improved data collection on the rapidly growing disability support industry and workforce, and for improved data about the experiences of the large group of people with disability who are not NDIS participants.
- As the funding of disability supports by the community is rapidly increasing, it is vital to report statistics and performance information that contribute to a broad picture of people with disability and their supports—not only the NDIS, but also from other services including health, education and aged care.
- There are opportunities to improve national statistics about the experience of people with disability. For example, the development of data integration agencies provides greater capacity to bring data together, under well-established data protection and ethics arrangements, to describe and understand the situation of people with disability.
Elder abuse can be understood as harm or distress caused to an older person within a relationship that has an expectation of trust. The most common forms of elder abuse are financial, psychological, physical, sexual, and social abuse, as well as neglect. There have not been any large-scale studies into the prevalence of elder abuse in Australia, but preparation for a national prevalence study is currently underway.
As elder abuse crosses many aspects of our community, strategies to address the issue will need involvement from all jurisdictions, as well as the mental health, housing, banking and aged care sectors. To support this, Australia needs better data so policymakers understand the scale of the problem, key patterns and trends.
- A paper by the Australian Institute of Family Studies estimates elder abuse affects between 2% and 14% of older Australians, and can occur within families, or within formal care environments (such as aged care). People with dementia are particularly vulnerable to abuse.
- Elder abuse (especially neglect) often goes undetected, and it is critical to develop common legal understandings of what constitutes elder abuse and how to recognise it.
- There is a lot of variation in how different cultural groups respond to elder abuse. In Australia, there is limited research about elder abuse among culturally and linguistically diverse groups and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, but there is some evidence to suggest that they are particularly vulnerable to financial abuse.
- More evidence is needed to know what works to prevent or stop elder abuse. However, family mediation, as well as multidisciplinary approaches (involving counselling, legal interventions, medical care and financial controls) show promise.
- A national plan was launched in March 2019 setting out the priority areas for action by all governments over the next 4 years, including strengthening service responses, helping people better plan for their future and strengthening safeguards for vulnerable people.
Over the past decade there has been a large increase in the use of administrative data in academic and policy research. More recently governments have invested in using data to inform policy and service delivery decisions. Demonstrating public good in the use of public data builds broad community support for use of linked administrative data by government and researchers.
The South Australian Early Childhood Data Project (SA ECDP) is able to track children’s health and welfare from before birth into early adulthood, and is one of the most comprehensive linked data resources in Australia. The SA ECDP holds linked de-identified administrative data for about 450,000 South Australian children born from 1991 onwards, and their parents and carers. Three case studies illustrate the value of data linkage.
- Case study 1: Linked child protection data were used to investigate a public health approach to child maltreatment. The research demonstrated that 1 in 4 (25%) children were notified to child protection, 1 in 20 (5%) were substantiated and 1 in 50 (2%) experienced some form of out-of-home care at least once by age 10. To put this into a health context, the cumulative incidence of contact with the child protection system is about 2.5 times that of asthma with the health system, the most common chronic health condition experienced by Australian children. The research also showed children who experienced out-of-home care were almost 3 times more likely to be developmentally vulnerable on school entry than children with no child protection contact. The scale of the contact that young children have with child protection illustrates the public health importance of effective treatment and prevention.
- Case study 2: Linked child protection, perinatal and births registration data were used to explore outcomes for young mothers and parents. Rather than age alone, the risk of poor outcomes increases with the convergence of personal, social and economic disadvantages that are more likely to occur with young maternal age. Most young mothers in South Australia do not have children placed in out-of-home care, but more than half of the children who experience out-of-home care were born to a mother who was young when she had her first child. The research showed that there should be a focus on young parents, not just young mothers, as 70% of mothers aged under 20 at their first birth had partners aged under 25. This research is feeding into a whole-of-government strategy on child protection secondary prevention.
- Case study 3: Linked perinatal, births registration, housing, Child and Family Health Service and child protection data were used to understand different levels of adversity and vulnerability experienced by infants in South Australia. Of the estimated 20,000 births per year, about 70% will experience none or 1 risk factor and are likely to require universal (mainstream) services only, while 30% will experience 2 or more risk factors, indicating a potential need for more intensive support. These proportions are almost reversed among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This research informed the development of a new model of care and is also informing resource allocation from lower to higher areas of need.
The SA ECDP has been a platform for research and academic partnerships, including with government agencies. The opening up of data sources across Australia and the growing recognition of the value of linked data represent an opportunity to inform and evaluate innovative approaches to intractable social problems, such as child maltreatment, while preserving confidentiality and privacy.
Chapter 1 An overview of Australia’s welfare
Chapter 2 Intergenerational transmission of disadvantage in Australia
Chapter 3 Income support over the past 20 years
Chapter 4 Income support among working-age Indigenous Australians
Chapter 5 The future of work: using skills data for better job outcomes
Chapter 6 Disability services and statistics: past, present and future
Chapter 7 Elder abuse: context, concepts and challenges
Chapter 8 An innovative linked data platform to improve the wellbeing of children—the South Australian Early Childhood Data Project
End matter: Acknowledgments; Abbreviations; Glossary