AUSTRALIA - Australian poverty rate hits 13.9 per cent, ACOSS report shows

An article by Lauren Wilson entitled „Australian poverty rate hits 13.9 per cent, ACOSS report shows“ published on the website news.com.au on 12th October 2014 discusses the reasons for the increasing poverty rate in Australia. Today, Australia has more than 2.5 Million inhabitants who live below the OECD poverty line. These 19.9% of the population live with less than 400$ per week if they are a single adult or with less than 841$ per week if they are a couple with two or more children. The executive chief of the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) says the findings highlight the need for a national plan to tackle the problem of poverty. She also mentions that such a rise of the poverty rate is unacceptable. In addition, she emphasizes that the community has to be confronted with the problems if there should be any improvement.

According to the report, the worst situation is found in the island of Tasmania with 15% of people living in poverty. Directly behind lies Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and last in line is South Australia with 11.7%. It is also mentioned that women are more in danger of living in poverty than men. We also learn that a half of all the recipient of welfare live below the poverty line set by the OECD.

What we have to say about this:

According to the statistics, Australia has had a continuum economic growth since 1992. In 2008 the national unemployment rate decreased to only 4 percent, which was the minimum for over 30 years. Australia has a well-developed education system, a good health system and in general people have a high standard of living, even though there are more than 2.5 million Australians out of 23 million inhabitants living below the OECD poverty line today. In the past two years the national poverty rate rose to 13.9 percent. For the Australian children the situation is even worse: 17.3 percent of kids across the island live in poverty and as far as single parent households are concerned more than one of three is poor. And the unemployment rate in Australia is about 6.4 percent in 2014. So what happened?

In 2009 the financial crisis hit Australia. More than 300’000 people lost their jobs and the unemployment rate rose to 5.59 percent.  In Switzerland the unemployment rate rose from 2.5 to 4.5 percent. After the financial crisis the rate decreased very fast in Switzerland and two years later was almost as low as before the crisis. On the island the rate only decreased to 5.3 percent and stayed constant in the following years. Since the beginning of the year the rate has risen and in July reached a rate of 6.3 percent, which is the highest in 12 years. More than 1.5 million Australians don’t have a job today.

Unfortunately there’s not a real system to support the unemployed in Australia. Compared to Switzerland the unemployment benefit is extremely low. With the budget of a welfare recipients a normal live is nearly impossible and for a lot of people it means living in poverty.

But the main reason for the rising unemployment rate and the increasing poverty rate is the high population growth. In 2013 the Australian population grew about 1.7 percent. 60 percent of the growth was due to immigration. The Swiss population grew in the past year about 1.1 percent and only grows because of immigration. A lot of people come to Australia to work there, but then can’t find a job. But not only immigrants are suffering because of the lack of job offers. Also teenagers between 15 and 24 years have problems finding a job. About 18 percent of them don’t have a job.

The Australian economy is growing and every year there will be new job offers but the problem is that the economy doesn’t grow as fast as would be required to satisfy the demand for new jobs, a demand caused by the growing population. And because there is no real system to support the unemployed a large part of the population lives in “poverty”. (Gr, Ma, Jo, Ni)