Ex-serving ADF members' income and sources of income

Financial stress is defined as having difficulty meeting basic financial commitments due to a shortage of money or debt. It can have severe short- and long-term consequences for individuals, and negatively impact an individual’s health and psychological wellbeing (Department of Education 2023).

In this section, financial stress is compared between current or ex-serving ADF member households and households with no current or ex-serving ADF members using data from the 2019–20 Survey of Income and Housing (SIH).

For more information on the ex-serving ADF population in scope for the analysis of household financial stress, see Included in this analysis.

Key findings

Households with people who had ever served (currently or previously) with the ADF reported less financial stress and more financially resilient actions compared with households comprised of people who had never served with the ADF.

• Overall, households with people who had ever served in the ADF, compared to households comprising people who had never served in the ADF, were:
  • more likely to have no financial stress (72% compared to 64%)
  • less likely to report four or more financial stress indicators (5.4% compared to 9.3%)
  • more likely to take financially resilient actions in the 12 months before the survey, including saving regularly, making voluntary contributions towards superannuation, and receiving financial information, counselling, or advice from a professional.
• Similar results were found when only households in the lowest equivalised disposable household income quintile was analysed compared to when all quintiles were included as above.
• For households in the highest equivalised disposable household income quintile, there was generally no difference between households with or without ADF members.

The interactive data visualisation (Figure 3) presents data on household financial stress. Select from the ‘Service status’ drop-down list to view results for households with current or ex-serving ADF members or households with no current or ex-serving ADF members. Select from the ‘Income Quintiles’ drop-down list to view results by quintile of equivalised total household income.

Figure 3: Percentages of households with current or ex-serving ADF members compared to households with no current or ex-serving ADF members, by equivalised disposable household income quintiles and financial stress indicators, SIH 2019–20

Included in this analysis

In the 2019–20 SIH, there were an estimated:

• 620,000 households with at least one member who has ever served (either currently serving or ex-serving) in the ADF
• 9.1 million households with no members having ever served in the ADF.

Participants of the survey self-reported if they have ever served in the ADF. It is not possible to distinguish between current-serving and ex-serving personnel in the survey.

Further information on SIH can be found in Technical notes.

Excel source data tables are available from Data.