This article draws on evidence generated in recent deprivation studies conducted by the author and colleagues at the Social Policy Research Centre. After outlining some of the main limitations of poverty line studies, the paper explains how the deprivation approach addresses these weaknesses and illustrates the insights that deprivation studies can provide into the nature of poverty in contemporary Australia. It then compares the results produced by a deprivation approach with those produced using a poverty line – both in terms of what they imply about the extent of the problem and who they suggest is most affected by it. The comparisons demonstrate that the reservations that many hold about poverty research can be overcome and that when this is done, the results become more compelling and thus have the potential to have a greater impact on anti-poverty policy.

Tony Atkinson’s death at the beginning of 2017 deprived economics of one of its leading contributors to research on public economics, inequality, poverty and the welfare state. This article focuses on his last official role, as Chair of the World Bank Commission on Global Poverty. The report of the Commission – already referred to as the Atkinson Commission – proposes a new approach to measuring and monitoring the global poverty reduction targets established as part of the Sustainable Development Goals agreed by the United Nations in 2015. Atkinson developed the framework and provided the academic impetus to the work of the Commission and wrote much of its report, assisted by comments provided by an Advisory Board of eminent experts in the field and a smaller working group of selected members. The article describes some of the main features of the report’s 21 recommendations, focusing on the measurement of poverty in both monetary and non-monetary dimensions and its attempt to draw together national and global efforts to measure and reduce poverty in all its forms. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of the new approach for Australia, which like many other developed countries has so far failed to engage actively with the debate over addressing extreme global poverty.

This paper describes and analyses aspects of Australian income support and service arrangements for the aged in the context of broader issues relating to privatisation. It is argued that much of the welfare privatisation debate is overly simplistic and does not recognise the important role which the non-government sector already plays in aspects of support for the age. Analysis of income data shows, for example, that transfer income currently accounts for less than half of the income of the aged. The trend towards superannuation is apparent in the data, although some doubts are raised about the impact of superannuation expansion on the finance of population ageing. In the area of community services, the paper describes the development of policy over the last few decades in order to illustrate the complexity of existing arrangements. The switch from institutional to community care is identified as a major trend, particularly during the 1980s, and some of the implications of this development for privatisation are drawn out and analysed.

As in many other countries, the eighties have seen the re-emergence of poverty as a political issue in Australia. Rising unemployment and the increased incidence of sole parenthood have put more children at risk of poverty, a development which has prompted increased policy concern. This paper presents estimates of the incidence and structure of poverty in Australia in 1981–82, 1985–86 and 1989–90, using the poverty standard developed by the Poverty Commission in the seventies. The estimates for 1989–90 are based on data generated from the 1986 Income Distribution Survey by a microsimulation model that allows for trends in demographic change, labour market participation and income during the second half of the eighties. The results indicate that the overall poverty rate has increased from 9.2 per cent in 1981–82 to 12.8 per cent in 1989–90. This is despite the fact that the incomes of many low income groups have increased in real terms, in many cases substantially. The reason for this apparent paradox is that the poverty standard is a relative one, and has thus itself been increased in line with average community incomes. One of the conclusions of the paper is that it may be necessary to reconsider the use of a relative poverty standard when assessing short-run trends in the extent of poverty.

Social exclusion is influencing how social policy issues are conceived, debated, researched and addressed, particularly in Europe. It has also been given prominence as a focus of the Rudd Government's social policy agenda. This paper reviews the debate over the definition and measurement of social exclusion, focusing on its relationship with poverty, defined in terms of low-income. The analysis is based on the premise that conceptual and measurement issues can play an important role in identifying causation, and thus point to the kinds of actions needed to address the problem. The argument is illustrated by drawing on recent Australian research that shows that exclusion takes many different but often inter-connected forms, and that there is a low degree of overlap between exclusion and poverty. The implications of the findings for research and policy are briefly discussed.

This paper analyses recently released ABS data on the distribution of income and examines how inequality has changed since 1994–95 and since the election of the Howard Government in 1995–96. While real disposable incomes increased across the distribution, income inequality has also increased since 1994–95, particularly between 1996–97 and 1999–2000. Over the entire period from 1994–95 to 2000–01, mean income in the top quintile increased by $111 a week, more than eight times the increase of $13 a week in the lowest quintile. Since the Howard government came to office, the estimates indicate that almost half (47.3 per cent) of the total increase in disposable income was received by those in the top quintile — implying that half of the income generated by economic growth has been of no benefit to the bottom four-fifths (in income terms) of the population. Comparison with earlier research also shows that income inequality has, in some respects, increased more rapidly since the mid-1990s than during the 1980s.

It has long been accepted that the adequacy of payments is a key objective of any social security system, where adequacy is defined as the ability of a payment to support a basic acceptable standard of living that is consistent with prevailing community standards. The 2009 Harmer Pension Review directed attention to the adequacy of the pension, an issue that has not been systematically examined in Australia for several decades. This article reviews alternative definitions of adequacy and shows that its basic features have been consistently recognised in official reports conducted over a long period. The deprivation approach is then described and shown to produce estimates that have a direct bearing on this conception of income adequacy. Using the results from two recent surveys, conducted in 2006 and 2010, the article compares levels of deprivation among groups defined on the basis of their principal source of income, including those dependent on an Age Pension and several other forms of social security payment. The results indicate that the adequacy of the Age Pension in 2006 was above that of payments awarded on the basis of disability, unemployment or sole parenthood, and also that the pension increase awarded following the Pension Review reduced deprivation among those who received it. However, the increase was not well targeted to those groups who required further assistance, as indicated by the levels of deprivation they were facing. Further application of the deprivation approach would provide new insights into the nature and extent of existing income inadequacies.

The welfare reform debate is proceeding against a background of high unemployment and rising inequality. In Australia, the blueprint for reform of the social security system developed by the McClure Report is built around the notion of mutual obligation — the idea that those who receive support from government should be required to ‘give something back’. Public opinion is supportive of requiring mutual obligation of some groups of the unemployed, but it also supports the view that solving unemployment generally is the government’s responsibility. Although welfare reforms introduced in the US and UK have reduced the welfare rolls, their impact on wages and the labour market must also be considered. If welfare reform in Australia is to avoid the low wages and extreme poverty that are features of the US, welfare reform will need to be accompanied by reform of the labour market.

A budget standard indicates how much a particular family living in a particular place at a particular time needs in order to achieve a particular standard of living. This article presents new estimates that build on the earlier budget standards produced by the Social Policy Research Centre in the 1990s. The new budgets incorporate increases in consumer prices and community standards and reflect changes in item availability, retail practices and shopping behaviour, as well as improved research methods, 20 years of use and experience, and new data. They are designed to achieve a minimum income for healthy living standard and apply to families with a breadwinner who is either in full-time work and receiving the minimum wage, or unemployed and receiving Newstart Allowance. The estimates suggest that although the minimum wage is adequate for single people, it is not adequate to meet the needs of many couple families with and without children, while Newstart Allowance does not provide an adequate safety net for the unemployed, whatever their family status.

This article examines trends in social disadvantage in Australia over the decade to 2018 using two approaches: a monetary approach using poverty and a living standards approach using deprivation. We compare the two approaches, highlight their implications and assess whether the evidence produced by each is consistent with trickle-down effects. The estimates allow for variations in thresholds, the treatment of housing costs and relative and absolute measures. The findings indicate an overall decline in poverty that is dependent on the treatment of housing costs and a more consistent decline in deprivation but with little or no improvement for many experiencing poverty or deprivation. Poverty and deprivation among unemployed households were above those for people in other labour force states throughout the period and while these differentials have narrowed, the findings suggest that trickle-down effects did not reach many of those highly disadvantaged or are subject to long delays.

Infectious disease outbreaks on the scale of the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic are a new phenomenon in many parts of the world. Many isolation unit designs with corresponding workflow dynamics and personal protective equipment postures have been proposed for each emerging disease at the health facility level, depending on the mode of transmission. However, personnel and resource management at the isolation units for a resilient response will vary by human resource capacity, reporting requirements, and practice setting. This study describes an approach to isolation unit management at a rural Uganda Hospital and shares lessons from the Uganda experience for isolation unit managers in low- and middle-income settings.

This Essay examines a series of paradoxes that have rendered the international legal order's mechanisms for collective action powerless precisely when they are needed most to fight COVID-19. The “patriotism paradox” is that disengagement from the international legal order weakens rather than strengthens state sovereignty. The “border paradox” is that securing domestic populations by excluding noncitizens, in the absence of accompanying regulatory mechanisms to secure adherence to internal health measures, accelerates viral spread among citizens. The “equality paradox” is that while pandemics pose an equal threat to all people, their impacts compound existing inequalities.