A major national survey has revealed a “silent crisis” among Australian families, with nearly one-in-three single parent households living in poverty.
The newly released statistical report on the long-running Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey found that, after adjusting for housing costs, 31.3% of single parent families were living below the poverty line in 2023.
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This group is nearly three times more likely to be in poverty than two-parent households, the survey showed.
The latest reported figure was down from a record high reported in 2022, but was still well above the 25% share of single parent households in poverty a decade earlier, and higher than the 28.3% in poverty in 2003.
Hilda graph
Hilda’s co-director, Roger Wilkins, said the history of the survey revealed a worsening trend over the past 10 to 15 years as changes under the Howard and Gillard governments forced single parents – predominately mothers – off parenting payments and on to less generous unemployment benefits.
Wilkins, from the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, said a household was considered to be in poverty if its income after paying tax and rent or the mortgage was less than half that of a middle-income household.
This relative measure of poverty was “a bit of a moving target. If average living standards rise so does the poverty line,” Wilkins said.
“But average living standards haven’t been rising in recent years, so we can’t really claim that as a defence on why we are not making progress.”
Wilkins said that despite evidence of a long-term policy failure, the issue of climbing poverty among single parent households seemed to “have real trouble getting any traction in the public consciousness”.
“It’s like this silent crisis in the community. It’s not some statistical anomaly, it’s translating to real suffering experienced by a lot of people.”
“It’s a demographic group we should be concerned about.
“And it’s not just the single parents, it’s the children we are potentially entrenching in long term disadvantage and which is having all sorts of social harms down the track.”
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The survey showed 34.7% of children in single parent households are in poverty.
The Albanese government announced that from September 2023 single parents would be able to stay on the more generous parenting payment until their children turned 14, rather than eight.
That change, combined with boosts to rental assistance payments, have helped single parents, Wilkins said.
But he said there was a lot more work to do to lift up the most disadvantaged people.
“The first thing is we don’t even have an official poverty measure – we won’t even adopt a standard by which we can hold the government to account.
“There are 140-150 countries that have an official poverty standard, and we don’t – how does that accord to our self perception of being an egalitarian society?”
