By Arthur Plottier
This week we have in the news the ‘The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey’ (the HILDA report) and it does not paint a healthy picture. Despite our recent natural resources boom we are going backwards.
Some of the findings in the report are:
- Households headed by a person aged 25 to 34 have fallen since 1960; from 60% to 47%. Also, the wealth in this group also have shrunk over the same period.
- Roger Wilkins, the author of the report, said there had been “no real increase” in household wealth since 2006 and no real increase in incomes since 2009.
- Wilkins says the number of owner-occupied houses fell by 3.5 percentage points between 2001 and 2015, and is tipped to decline further.
- Close to 70 per cent of all Australian households received some form of welfare benefits between 2001 and 2014.
- From 2012 household income has recovered slowly, climbing to $75,731 in 2014, still 0.7 per cent worse than in 2009, meaning typical Australian families are no better off than they were five years ago.
- 12 per cent of households surveyed were unable to lay their hands on $500 of savings in the event of an emergency.
- “Parents using childcare are, in real terms, paying more than double the fees they were paying in 2002. This is despite 25 per cent of families relying on grandparents for childcare, who provide an average of 14 hours of care per week,” said Prof Wilkins.
Not a lot to get excited about, is there?
