How Australia's falling short on poverty | The Business | ABC NEWS скачать в хорошем качестве

How Australia's falling short on poverty | The Business | ABC NEWS

In 2024, the Productivity Commission estimated 14 per cent of the population — roughly one in every seven people — live in poverty. That's the highest estimated level since 2001. The commission's estimate is based on Australians living on incomes below 50 per cent of the median, but there's no broadly agreed "number" or official index used across the economy. In Anti-Poverty Week, advocates are calling for the government to adopt what's called a multi-dimensional poverty index to firstly track and then reduce the number of people living without. Brotherhood of St Laurence (BSL) chief executive Travers McLeod says we need to look at multiple elements that impact on a person's wellbeing like the ability to access essential services including health, housing, education and employment. Overseas models examine what Dr McLeod calls the "incidence and intensity of those deprivations" and helps us to understand the reasons why people are poor and how to target effective responses. "About 160 countries around the world have official poverty measures today, either a monetary measure or a multi-dimensional measure," he says. The call comes 50 years after the landmark Henderson Review into poverty set a measure for an "austere standard of living" that became known as a "poverty line". It has since been referred to as the Henderson Poverty Line (HPL), after Commissioner Ronald Henderson, who led the probe. The Henderson Poverty Line is still used. But the world has changed. From the traditional "male breadwinner model" of the 1970s, most adults are now in full or part-time work. The concept of "full employment" has changed and housing costs — both home loan repayments and rental payments — have started to take an ever-increasing chunk of incomes. Internationally, there are measures that give a more sensitive indication of changes — like the impact of inflation on the price of groceries or housing — than the simple "how much you earn" measure. BSL's Dr McLeod says countries very similar to Australia — Canada and New Zealand — have adopted the measures in the past decade and introduced national poverty reduction strategies that have seen quite significant reductions in poverty since those official measures were introduced. The ABC put questions to Treasurer Jim Chalmers about introducing a multi-dimensional poverty index and didn't get a response. #ABCBusiness Subscribe: http://ab.co/1svxLVE Read more here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-1... ABC NEWS provides around the clock coverage of news events as they break in Australia and abroad. It's news when you want it, from Australia's most trusted news organisation. For more from ABC NEWS, click here: https://ab.co/2kxYCZY Watch more ABC NEWS content ad-free on ABC iview: https://ab.co/2OB7Mk1 Go deeper on our ABC NEWS In-depth channel: https://ab.co/2lNeBn2 Like ABC NEWS on Facebook:   / abcnews.au   Follow ABC NEWS on Instagram:   / abcnews_au   Follow ABC NEWS on X (Twitter):   / abcnews   Note: In most cases, our captions are auto-generated. #ABCNEWS #ABCNEWSAustralia