As Sydney’s lockdown continues, what support is available — and needed — for people losing income?

Mick Tsikas/AAP

Peter Whiteford, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University and Bruce Bradbury, UNSWGreater Sydney is in its third week of lockdown, with no clear end in sight. The situation calls for support both for businesses and households suffering severe income loss in the weeks ahead.

Greater Sydney makes up about one-fifth of the Australian population, so is a significant chunk of our economy and community.

It’s worth noting when the (now extinct) Coronavirus Supplement was announced on March 22 2020, there were 179 new cases per day for all of Australia. When the (also now extinct) JobKeeper Payment was announced a week later, there were 383 new cases per day.

There were 112 new cases announced in NSW alone on Monday.

A federal government responsibility

In June, Prime Minister Scott Morrison indicated business support was a state government responsibility. But income support for households is a federal government responsibility.

In 2020, the Morrison government showed great flexibility. JobKeeper supported employers to maintain part-wages for workers who would otherwise be stood down, and the Coronavirus Supplement gave additional support to those who lost their jobs.

Sydney had been in lockdown since June 26.
Mick Tsikas/AAP

These programs went a long way towards addressing a weakness of Australia’s social security system — the lack of insurance against sudden income loss when workers are laid off (for whatever reason). Indeed, for a while, the Coronavirus Supplement also worked to address another major weakness, the below-poverty line income for the long-term unemployed.

JobKeeper and the Coronavirus Supplement ended earlier this year. Most recently, the federal government has built on existing schemes to assist people during natural disasters, to support those during lockdowns or quarantine.

The last few months in Melbourne and Sydney show the COVID crisis is far from finished. Morrison has flagged that further financial support is being considered by the government. Treasury is reportedly working on options.

There are currently two main forms of support.

The COVID-19 Disaster Payment

The first main support is the COVID-19 Disaster Payment. This kicks in once a lockdown has gone on for more than a week. For those losing under 20 hours work, the payment is $325 per week, and for those losing 20 hours or more of work, the payment is $500 per week.

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There’s a new temporary COVID disaster payment – who can get it? Who is missing out?

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There are several eligibility criteria: recipients must be unable to attend work and have lost income, they can’t have access to appropriate paid leave and they can’t be receiving an income support payment, a state pandemic payment or the Pandemic Leave Disaster Payment for the same period.

Last week, Morrison announced the liquid assets limit of $10,000 would be waived from the third week of a lockdown.

Pandemic leave payment

The second key support is the Pandemic Leave Disaster Payment, where an appropriate local health authority has told people to self-isolate or quarantine, or for those who need to care for someone with COVID-19. This includes Australian residents and those with a working visa.

The payment is $1,500 for each 14-day period someone needs to self-isolate or quarantine. A new claim must be made each 14-day period and Services Australia has set up accelerated application processes.

As with the COVID disaster payment, those with any income from paid work or other leave entitlements, or on income support payments, are not eligible.

How adequate are these measures?

Whether support is adequate depends on the spread of the virus and its economic impact in coming weeks. But there are already gaps in support.

It is confusing to have two payments at different levels, with people required to quarantine receiving greater support than those locked down, even when financial losses may be similar.

The Delta variant has turned the Sydney CBD into a ghost town.
Mick Tsikas/AAP

The Pandemic Leave Disaster Payment is comparable to JobKeeper, but the Covid-19 Disaster Payment is considerably less (although higher than JobSeeker Payment for the unemployed).

As we have already noted, both payments have significant exclusions. With the COVID-19 payment, apart from being unavailable for the first week, people must submit a new claim for each additional week of lockdown.

What about those already on welfare?

While the government increased the base rate of JobSeeker Payment earlier this year, Australia still has the second lowest “replacement rate” (relative to wages) for the unemployed in all OECD countries.

Another significant gap is most of the current help cannot go to people already receiving income support, although many of them may lose income in lockdown.

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Unemployment support will be slashed by $300 this week. This won’t help people find work

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Welfare recipients who have to go into isolation or quarantine can access a one-off crisis payment (equal to a week’s pay at the maximum basic rate of their payment), but this is only available twice in a six month period.

According to Australian government data, in May, nearly one in four people receiving Youth Allowance (Other) and more than 20% of those receiving JobSeeker had part-time earnings, which is crucial to help people paying rent and bills. If they lose earnings, their benefits will increase, but by less than half the earnings lost.

Business support

We keep hearing reports about how small business is suffering badly.

Small businesses have many fixed costs — most notably rent — that will not be supported. More generally, so far, most of the costs of the lockdowns have been borne by either employees, employers in locked down industries, or government.

But a wider sharing of the costs via rent and interest moratoriums for affected businesses and households should be considered. This requires co-ordinated action by the state and federal governments.

Importantly, state governments are looking at their own measures. Last week, Victoria announced it would trial up to five days of sick or carer’s leave, at minimum wage rates, to workers in high-risk industries, including aged care, cleaners, supermarket workers, hospitality workers and security guards. However, this will not start until early 2022.

NSW has been pushing the federal government to jointly devise a new scheme to save jobs. An announcement is expected imminently.

Whatever this is, governments need to be realistic about what businesses and households are facing. The longer lockdown lasts, the more people will need longer-term solutions to costs they can’t get away from, like mortages, rents and basic living expenses.

Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University and Bruce Bradbury, Associate Professor, Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Retirement incomes review finds problems more super won’t solve

Robyn Mackenzie/Shutterstock

Peter Martin, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

It would be a waste if the Friday’s mammoth Retirement Incomes Review was remembered only for its finding that increases in employers compulsory superannuation contributions come at the expense of wages.

That has long been assumed, and is what was intended when compulsory super was set up.

Compulsory super contributions are set to increase in five annual steps of 0.5% of salary between 2021 and 2025.

These are much bigger increases than the earlier two of 0.25% in 2012 and 2013.

And the wage rises they will be taken from will be much lower. The latest figures released on Wednesday point to shockingly low annual wage growth of 1.4%.

Should each of the scheduled increases in employers compulsory super knock 0.4 points off wage growth (which is what the review expects) annual wage growth would sink from 1.4% to 1%.

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Workers bear 71% to 100% of the cost of increases in compulsory super

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Private sector wage would sink from 1.2% to 0.8%, in the absence of something to push it back up.

Because inflation will almost certainly be higher than 1%, it means the buying power of wages would go backwards, all for the sake of a better life in retirement.

The review presents the finding starkly. Lifting compulsory super contributions from 9.5% of salary to 12% will cut working-life incomes by about 2%.

And for what? It’s a question the review spends a lot of time examining.

Most retirees have enough

The review dispenses with the argument that the goal of a retirement income system should be “aspirational”, or to provide people with higher income in retirement than they had in their working lives.

It finds that for retirees presently aged 65-74 the replacement rates for middle to higher income earners are generally adequate.

Source: Australian Tax Office

Many lower-income earners get more per year in retirement than they got while working.

If the increases in compulsory super proceed as planned, this will extend to the bottom 60% of the income distribution.

They’ll enjoy a higher standard of living in retirement than while working (and will enjoy a lower standard of living while working than they would have).

Most retirees die with most of what they had when they retired, leaving it as a bequest. They are reluctant to “eat into” their super and other savings because of concerns about possible future health and aged care costs, and concerns about outliving savings.

The review quite reasonably sees this as a betrayal of the purpose of government-supported super, saying

superannuation savings are supported by tax concessions for the purpose of retirement income and not purely for wealth accumulation

It’s the pension that matters

The pension does what super cannot. It provides a buffer for retirees whose income and savings fall due to market volatility, and for those who outlive their savings. 71% of people of age pension age get it or a similar payment. More than 60% of them get the full pension.

If there’s one key message of the review, it is this: it is the pension rather than super that matters for maintaining living standards in retirement, which is what the review was asked to consider.

It is also cost-effective compared to the growing budgetary cost of the super tax concessions.

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Why we should worry less about retirement – and leave super at 9.5%

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The age pension costs 2.5% of GDP and is set to fall to 2.3% of GDP over the next 40 years as the super system matures and tighter means tests bite.

Treasury modelling prepared for the review shows that if more money is directed into super and away from wages as scheduled, the annual budgetary cost of the super tax concessions will exceed the cost of the pension by 2050.

There’s a real retirement income problem

A substantial proportion of Australians, about 30%, are financially worse off in retirement than while working, and they are people neither super nor the pension can help.

Mostly they are older Australians who have lost their jobs and cannot get new ones before they before eligible for the age pension or become old enough to get access to their super. Often they’ve left the workforce due to ill health or to care for others and are forced to rely on JobSeeker, which is well below the poverty line.

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It’s much worse if they rent privately. About one quarter of retirees who rent privately are in financial stress, so much so that the review finds even a 40%
increase in the maximum Commonwealth Rent Assistance payment wouldn’t be enough to get them a decent standard of living in retirement.

No recommendations, but findings aplenty

The review was not asked to produce recommendations. Instead, while noting that much of the system works well, it has pointed to things that need urgent attention.

It finds that pouring a greater proportion of each pay packet into the hands of super funds is not the sort of attention needed, and in the present unusual circumstances could cost jobs as employers who can’t take the extra cost out of wages take it out of headcount.

The government will make a decision about whether to proceed with the legislated increase in compulsory super in its May budget, just before the first of the five increases due in July.

Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

5 questions about superannuation the government’s new inquiry will need to ask

Superannuation has a smaller role in the retirement incomes system than is often suggested.
Shutterstock

Peter Martin, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

The government’s new retirement incomes review will need to work quickly.

On Friday Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said he expected a final report by June, just seven months after the issues paper he wants it to deliver by November.

The deadline is tight for a reason. In recommending the inquiry in its report on the (in)effeciency of Australia’s superannuation system this year, the Productivity Commission said it should be completed “in advance of any increase in the superannuation guarantee rate”.

In other words, in advance of the next leglislated increase in compulsory superannuation contributions, which is on July 1, 2021.

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Government retirement incomes inquiry puts superannuation in the frame

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The next increase (actually, the next five increases) will hurt.

The last two, on July 1 2013 and July 1 2014, took place when wage growth was stronger. In 2013 wages growth was 3% per year.

Source: Australian Tax Office

And they were small – an extra 0.25 per cent of salary each.

The next five, to be imposed annually from July 1 2021, are twice the size: 0.5% of salary each.

If taken out of wage growth, they’ve the potential to cut it from its present usually low 2.3% per annum to something with a “1” in front of it, pushing it below the rate of inflation, for five consecutive years.

If we were going to do that (even if we thought the economy and wage growth could afford it) it would be a good idea to have a good reason why. After all, compulsory superannuation is the compulsory locking away of income that could otherwise be spent or used to pay down debt or saved through another vehicle, regardless of the wishes of the person whose income it is.

Question 1. What’s it for?

Fortunately, the new inquiry doesn’t need to do much work on this one.

For most of its life compulsory super hasn’t had an agreed purpose. At times it has been justified as a means of restraining wage growth, at times as means of restraining government spending on the pension, at times as means of boosting national savings.

In 2014, more than 20 years after compulsory super began, the Murray Financial System Review asked the government to set a clear objective for it, and two years later the government came up with one, enshrined in a bill entitled the Superannuation (Objective) Bill 2016.

The bill lapsed, but the objective at its centre lives on as the best description we’ve come up with yet of what compulsory super is for:

to provide income in retirement to substitute or supplement the age pension

Which raises the question of how much we need. For compulsory super, the answer is probably none. People who want more than the pension and their other savings can save more through voluntary super. People who don’t want more (or can’t afford to save more) shouldn’t.

Question 2. How much do people need?

Assuming for the moment that how much people need in retirement is relevant for determining how much compulsory super they need, the inquiry will need to examine what people need to live on in retirement.

The “standards” prepared by the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia are loose. The more generous of the two allows for overseas travel every two or so years, A$163 per couple per fortnight on dining out, $81 on alcohol “or equivalent spent
with charity or church”.

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Why we should worry less about retirement – and leave super at 9.5%

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It isn’t a reasonable guide to how much people need to live on, and certainly isn’t a reasonable guide for how much the government should intervene to make sure they have to live on. They are standards it doesn’t intervene to support while people are working.

And there’s something else. Super isn’t what will fund it. Most retirement living is funded outside of super, either through the age pension, private savings, or the family home (which saves on rent). Most 65 year olds have more saved outside of super than in it, and a lot more than that saved in the family home.

It’s a slight of hand to say that retirees need a certain proportion of their final wage to live on and then to say that that’s how much super should provide.

Question 3: Does it come out of wages?

The best guess is that, although paid by employers in addition to wages, compulsory super comes out of what would otherwise have been their wage bill.

Treasury puts it this way:

Though compulsory superannuation guarantee contributions are paid by employers, wage setting generally takes into account all labour costs. As such, it is widely accepted that employees bear the cost of higher superannuation guarantees in the form of lower take home pay.

The inquiry will probably make its own determination. If it finds that extra contributions do indeed come out of what would have been pay rises, it will have to consider the tradeoff between lower pay rises (and they are already very low) and the compulsory provision of more superannuation in retirement.

Question 4: Does it boost private saving?

It’d be tempting to think that the compulsory nature of compulsory superannuation meant that each extra dollar funnelled into it increased retirement savings by an extra dollar. But it doesn’t, in part because wealthy Australians who are already saving a lot have the option of offsetting it by saving less in other ways.

For them, the increase in saving isn’t compulsory.

For financially stretched Australians unable to afford to save (or for Australians at times in times life when they can’t afford to save) the compulsion is real, and unwelcome.

The inquiry will have to make its own assessment, updating Reserve Bank research which found in 2007 that each extra dollar in compulsory accounts added between 70 and 90 cents to household wealth.

Question 5: Does it boost national saving?

Boosting private saving (at the expense of people who are unable to escape) is one thing. Boosting national savings (private and government) is another. The tax concessions the government hands out to support superannuation are expensive. The concession on contributions alone is set to cost $19 billion this year and $23 billion in 2022-23, notwithstanding some tightening up. It predominately benefits high earners, the kind of people who don’t need assistance to save.

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Myth busted. Boosting super would cost the budget more than it saved on age pensions

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On balance it is likely that the system does little for national savings, cutting government savings by as much as it boosts private savings. But because the question hasn’t been asked, not since the Fitzgerald report on national saving in 1993 shortly after compulsory super was introduced, we don’t know.

It’ll be up to the inquiry to bring us up to date.

Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Your income tax questions answered in three easy charts: Labor and Coalition proposals side by side

To start with each side offers a “lamington” (Low and Middle Income Tax offset), then the differences get serious.
Shutterstock/Grattan Institute

Danielle Wood, Grattan Institute; Kate Griffiths, Grattan Institute, and Matt Cowgill, Grattan Institute

The two major parties have kicked off the election campaign with very different policies for cuts to personal income tax.

The Coalition promises its tax plan will deliver “lower, simpler, fairer taxes” while Labor says its plan is all about the “fair go”.

But putting aside the spin, how do the promised tax cuts compare? Will they make the tax system more progressive, or less? And what do they mean for the budget bottom line?

Tasting each plan

The Coalition plan comes in three stages.

The major part of Stage 1 is the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset (the LMITO, or “lamington” as some are calling it), which gives everyone earning less than A$126,000 a cheque in the mail come July and then another one in each of the following three years.

Stage 2 (2022-23) will lift the thresholds of the 19% and the 32.5% brackets.

The biggest cuts come in stage 3 (2024-25) when the 32.5% tax rate is cut to 30% and the 37% bracket is removed entirely.

The effect would be that everyone earning between $45,000 and $200,000 would face the same 30% marginal tax rate from July 1, 2024.

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The Labor plan gives a slightly higher offset (up to $95 a year more) for people earning less than $48,000 and then matches the lamington for people earning $48,000 or more.

Under Labor the lamington will be permanent, but Labor will not proceed with stages 2 and 3 of the Coalition’s tax plan.

From July 1, 2019, Labor will also increase the top marginal tax rate paid on incomes above $180,000 from 45% to 47% for an unspecified time, making it essentially a return of the Abbott government’s “temporary deficit reduction levy”.

The Coalition’s plan will cost the budget about A$298 billion over the next decade. Labor’s plan is at the moment much cheaper at about A$63 billion over the same period.

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Who wins, who loses?

How will different taxpayers fare under the two plans? That depends on what point in time we compare them.

If we focus on the next three years, there will be no difference in tax under the two plans for most people. The lowest income earners won’t pay income tax under either party’s policy.

About a quarter of taxpayers with taxable incomes of between $22,000 and $48,000 will be up to $95 better off under the Labor plan.

At the other end of the income spectrum, the top 5% of taxpayers earning more than $180,000 will pay more under Labor (equivalent to about $400 additional tax for someone earning $200,000).

The big differences between Labor and the Coalition’s tax policies open up when we get to stage 2 (2022-23) and particularly stage 3 (2024-25) of the Coalition’s plan.

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A simpler tax system should spark joy. Sadly, the one in this budget doesn’t

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By the end of the next decade, assuming both parties make no further changes to income tax policy:

• The third of taxfilers earning up to $40,000 will pay no tax or be slightly better off under Labor’s plan because Labor retains the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset.

• The third of taxfilers earning $40,000-$90,000 will be a bit better off under the Coalition’s plan. A taxpayer in the middle of the income distribution, earning $63,000 a year by 2029-30, will be approximately $432 a year better off under the Coalition.

• The third of taxfilers earning more than $90,000 will be at least $1,000 better off under the Coalition, and people in the top 8% will be over $10,000 better off.

The Coalition would refund bracket creep only at the top

The top 15% of earners would be fully compensated for bracket creep under the Coalition’s plan, paying the same average tax rate or less in 2029-30 as they do today.

But middle income earners would still face higher average tax rates than today.

If Labor were to make no further changes to income tax policy over the decade, Labor’s plan would see around 80% of taxpayers facing higher average tax rates in 2029-30 than at present. Top income earners would receive almost no insulation from bracket creep. This is why Labor’s plan results in a much healthier bottom line.

But it is difficult to imagine that any government could resist offering tax cuts to compensate for the effects of bracket creep over such an extended period.

Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen has already indicated that a future Labor government would consider tax cuts on a budget-by-budget basis, meaning that today’s policy doesn’t necessarily tell us what policy will be in a decade’s time.

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The Coalition would make the system less progressive

The “progressivity” of a tax system — the degree to which it reduces income inequality — can be measured by the Reynolds-Smolensky Index. It shows the tax system will at first become more progressive under both parties’ policies — meaning that post-tax income will become more equally shared.

This is because of the boost to the Low and Middle Income Tax Offset. But the final two rounds of tax cuts, at this stage offered only by the Coalition, will make the system significantly less progressive as the benefit is concentrated among higher income earners.

What Labor is offering at the moment will make the system more progressive and only becomes slightly less so over time.

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But both sides are virtue signalling

Despite the hype, the personal income tax system will look pretty similar for the next three years regardless of which party wins office.

Labor will tax high income earners more and low income earners slightly less. But for around 70% of people, personal income tax rates will be identical in three years time whether Scott Morrison or Bill Shorten is prime minister.

The big differences lie in the distant future, beyond 2024-25. Since it is almost unimaginable that either side of politics would leave its tax policies unchanged through another two elections the differences in the announced plans have more to do with signaling philosophy than reality.

The Coalition’s philosophy is about restraining tax as a share of the economy, even if that means it will need to shrink government spending as a share of GDP (in ways that are not yet unexplained).

Labor is signalling that it is more comfortable with the tax share creeping up — mostly thanks to increased contributions from high income earners — but it will make sure lower income earners don’t end up worse off.

Who says elections aren’t a contest of ideas?

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Potentially unaffordable, and it still won’t fix bracket creep. The Coalition’s $300 billion tax plan assessed

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Danielle Wood, Program Director, Budget Policy and Institutional Reform, Grattan Institute; Kate Griffiths, Senior Associate, Grattan Institute, and Matt Cowgill, Senior Associate, Grattan Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Rising reliance on personal income tax signals need for bolder reforms

Phil Lewis, University of Canberra

The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) has just released a report on trends in Commonwealth taxation receipts. While supporting the expectations of a budget in balance by 2019-20, it exposes worrying trends in the balance of the burden of taxes in Australia. In particular, its analysis of trends in the composition of tax revenue identifies an increasing reliance on personal income tax.

The PBO shows that tax revenue from labour (mostly income tax) was 8.6% of GDP in 1971-72. By 2015/16, this had risen to 12.6% of GDP. Over the same period, tax collections from capital (mostly company tax) as a percentage of GDP was virtually unchanged, from 3.3% to 3.2% – although this increased noticeably during the “economic boom”, which ended when the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) hit in 2007.

Taxes on consumption (such a GST and excise duties) were 5.3% of GDP in 1971-72 and 5.7% of GDP in 2015-16. While the introduction of the GST in July 2001 raised consumption taxes temporarily, revenue from both GST and particularly excise taxes has been in decline as a percent of GDP since.

Figure 2 from the report shows these trends over the decades.

Trends in revenue from categories of Commonwealth taxes.
Source: ATO data and PBO analysis

The main emphasis of the PBO report is on the period since 2001-02. The chart below shows the increased reliance on income tax and declining importance of taxes on consumption and capital.

What is driving these shifts?

The main reason for the rise in income tax revenue is “bracket creep” as incomes increase and taxpayers move into higher marginal tax brackets. This is due to successive governments not fully indexing tax brackets to increases in CPI or average earnings.

Meanwhile, consumers have been changing their tastes and responding to prices by altering their consumption patterns. The so-called “sin taxes”, or rates of excise duties on alcohol and tobacco, have increased significantly over time.

This has been particularly true for tobacco where the volume of consumption has fallen as fewer people smoke and those who do smoke less. However, the percentage fall in consumption has been less than the percentage rise in tax, so tobacco tax revenue has risen.

For alcohol, consumers have been switching from more highly taxed beer to wine, which is more lightly taxed. For instance, a full-strength beer from your bottle shop carries a tax of $37.10 per litre of alcohol. A moderately priced bottle of wine bears a tax less than half that ($17.60 per litre).

What might be considered a distortion in the taxing of alcohol means that changes in tastes towards drinking wine reduce tax revenue. The system of taxing alcohol is distorting in that encourages changing consumption habits away from beer drinking to wine.

Fuel excise is levied on a number of fuels but revenue comes mainly from petrol sales. The indexing of fuel excise rates was abolished in 2001 before being reintroduced in 2014. This reduction in the real excise rates was accompanied by significant reduction in the volume of fuel per household, from 11.4 L/km in 2001 to 10.6 L/km in 2016, as vehicles became more fuel-efficient.

The combination of reduced real excise rates and reduced consumption have reduced fuel excise revenue as a percentage of GDP.

The GST, one of the principal aims of which was to provide a broadly based growth tax, is declining in relative importance. This is mainly due to the exemptions from the GST base. For instance, spending on education and health, which are exempt from GST, is growing faster than spending on other goods and services. There is also some loss in revenue due to online purchases from overseas, which the government is trying to address.

As the share of consumers’ spending continues to switch from GST-liable to GST-exempt items the share of GST revenue will continue to fall.

Company taxes have diminished in importance in Australia and elsewhere because of the way multinational companies can arrange their tax liabilities across national borders to minimise tax. However, there is also worldwide recognition of the need to reduce company tax rates because of the detrimental effects these have on investment and growth.

The need to cut ‘deadweight loss’

When discussing taxes economist often refer to “deadweight loss”, which is the loss to the economy over and above the amount recouped in tax revenue. When revenue is taken from individuals or companies this results in less of a service or good being produced.

It is argued that governments should put more reliance on taxes that cause less distortion – less deadweight loss. That is, they should have as little effect on individuals’ and firms’ behaviour as possible.

A broad-based GST is efficient because all goods and services bear the same tax rate and therefore will not change relative consumption. It is exemptions that bring about inefficiency by encouraging consumption of untaxed items and discouraging consumption of taxed items. Taxing wine more lightly than beer encourages wine consumption at the expense of beer.

The Australian Treasury has named company tax and income tax as having the “biggest deadweight loss” of all the Commonwealth taxes. International research backs this up. The deadweight loss falls on consumers and shareholders but mostly on workers and wages through lower investment.

The Treasury estimates the deadweight loss of company tax could be more than half the revenue raised from taxation. For income taxes, the deadweight loss is estimated to be 21 cents for every dollar of revenue. This comes about from reduced incentives to work, save or invest.

The PBO report suggests that with continuing trends in taxation revenue the budget’s reliance on personal income tax will increase if current levels of Commonwealth taxation are maintained as a percentage of GDP. While proposals to reduce company tax rates will reduce inefficiency of taxes somewhat, a heavy and increasing reliance on personal income tax points to the need for substantial tax reform. But that’s something neither major party seems prepared to do.

Phil Lewis, Professor of Economics, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Who gets what? Who pays for it? How incomes, taxes and benefits work out for Australians

Public health spending is an important factor in reducing inequality between households in Australia.
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Peter Whiteford, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has just released its latest analysis of the effects of government benefits and taxes on household income. Overall, it shows government spending and taxes reduce income inequality by more than 40% in Australia. Disparities between the richest and poorest states are also greatly reduced.

The ABS analysis provides the most up-to-date (to 2015-16) and comprehensive figures on the impacts of government spending and taxes on income distribution. As well as direct taxes and social security benefits, it estimates the impact of “social transfers in kind” – goods and services that the government provides free or subsidises. These include government spending on education, health, housing, welfare services, and electricity concessions and rebates.

The figures also include a wide range of indirect taxes. Among these are GST, stamp duties and excises on alcohol, tobacco, fuel and gambling.

The 2015-16 results are the seventh in a series published every five to six years since 1984. The methodology is based on similar studies by the UK Office of National Statistics since the 1960s. The latest UK analysis coincidentally also came out on Wednesday.

How do the calculations work?

The ABS analyses income distribution in a number of stages.

First, it calculates the distribution of “private income”. This includes wages and salaries, self-employment, superannuation, interest, dividends and income from rental properties, among other items. It also includes net imputed rent from owner-occupied dwellings and subsidised private rentals.

Next the ABS adds social security benefits, such as the Age Pension, unemployment and family payments, to give “gross income”.

Then it deducts direct taxes – primarily income tax – to give “disposable income”.

The next stage is to add the estimated value households derive from government services. This is mainly the value of public health care and education spending.

The final stage is to deduct the estimated value of indirect taxes.

So what are the impacts on income inequality?

It is possible to calculate measures of economic inequality at different stages in this process. By implication, the difference between inequality measures is the result of the different government policies taken into account.

Figure 1 shows the Gini coefficient, which ranges between zero – where all households have exactly the same income – and 100% – where one household has all of the income. The Gini coefficient for private income in 2015-16 was 44.2. The addition of social security benefits, which mainly increase the incomes of low-income groups, reduces the coefficient by 8.1 percentage points.

Deducting income taxes – which are progressive – further reduces inequality by 4.5 points. Government non-cash benefits reduce the Gini coefficient by nearly as much as the social security system. However, indirect taxes slightly increase income inequality.

The Gini coefficient for final income is 24.9. So, compared to a coefficient of 44.2 for private income, government spending and taxes reduce overall income inequality by more than 40%.

Figure 1: Effects of government spending and taxes on income inequality, measured by Gini coefficient Australia 2015-16.
Data source: ABS Government Benefits, Taxes and Household Income, Australia, 2015-16, Author provided

While most of the reduction in inequality is due to government spending, taxes are obviously important to pay for this spending.

The social security system reduces income inequality (and poverty) because Australia targets benefits to the poor more than in any other high-income country.

Figure 2 shows the distribution of social security benefits and government services across income groups, from the poorest 20% to the richest 20% of households. The poorest 20% receive about seven times as much in benefits as the richest 20%. The average for OECD countries is close to one, with rich and poor receiving about the same amount.

Figure 2: Distribution of social spending ($ per week) by equivalised disposable household income quintiles, Australia 2015-16.
Data source: ABS Government Benefits, Taxes and Household Income, Australia, 2015-16, Author provided

Government spending on social services is also progressively distributed. This spending is considerably greater than social security spending and includes both Commonwealth and state spending on education and health.

The poorest 20% receive about 70% more in non-cash benefits than do the richest. This is not due to income-testing. Instead, it’s largely a result of the greater value of public health spending on hospitals and Medicare for older people, who tend to be in the bottom half of the income distribution.

Taxes, of course, work to reduce income inequality, as high-income groups pay a higher share than low-income groups. Figure 3 shows that the poorest 20% pay about 5% of their disposable income in direct taxes, while the richest 20% pay about 30% of their disposable income.

In contrast, indirect taxes – particularly those on tobacco and gambling – are regressive. Low-income groups pay more than high-income groups as a share of their disposable income. However, the undesirable effects of smoking and gambling on the wellbeing of low-income households need to be borne in mind.

When direct and indirect taxes are added together the overall tax system is less progressive, but the richest 20% still pay nearly twice as much of their disposable income as do the poorest 20%.

Figure 3: Distribution of direct and indirect taxes (% of disposable income) by equivalised disposable household income quintiles, Australia 2015-16.
Data source: ABS Government Benefits, Taxes and Household Income, Australia, 2015-16, Author provided

Redistribution also happens between age groups and states

In addition to reducing inequalities between income groups, government spending and taxes redistribute across age groups. Government spending is much higher for households of Age Pension age than for younger households. This is because of both the Age Pension and older households’ use of the healthcare system.

For example, households where the reference person is 75 or older receive on average just over $1,000 a week in government spending but pay about $180 a week in direct and indirect taxes. Households with a person aged 45 to 54 pay the highest taxes on average – about $800 per week – and on average receive about $620 a week in social spending.

There is also redistribution across states and territories. For example, average private income is about 65% higher in Western Australia than in Tasmania. However, on average, Western Australian households receive about two-thirds of the social security benefits that Tasmanian households get. This reduces the disparity in gross income to about 45%.

Western Australian households pay about twice as much in income taxes as Tasmanians, reducing the disparity to 35%. Households in the West receive only about 3% more in spending on social services than in Tasmania, which reduces the disparity in average incomes to 28%. West Australian households also pay about 20% more in indirect taxes than Tasmanian households (although as a percentage of disposable income, this is a higher share in Tasmania).

These figures suggest that while the financing of fairly equal social services across most parts of Australia reduces inequality between states, the income tax and social security systems also significantly reduce disparities. This is because income tax and social security are national systems and because Tasmania is the poorest state largely due to the higher share of age pensioners in its population.

Overall, this publication provides an invaluable picture of how government spending and taxes affect household economic well-being. Its results are relevant not only to the political debate about tax cuts, but also to long-term policy development to prepare Australia for an ageing population.

Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Greens urge Buffett rule to get more tax from high income earners

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

The Greens tax policy, released on Wednesday, would hit high income earners and target corporate tax avoidance.

The Greens plan would bring in “a Buffett rule” to ensure higher income earners paid their fair share of tax by limiting deductions made by those earning more than A$300,000.

“This will force high income earners to pay a minimum rate of tax and stop those on high incomes from deducting their taxable income to zero,” the policy says. The move would raise $9.5 billion over the forward estimates.

A Buffett rule – that would put a floor under the tax the very wealthy had to pay – has support within the left of Labor but is not ALP policy. It has been opposed by opposition leader Bill Shorten and shadow treasurer Chris Bowen but may be raised by the left at the July ALP national conference.

In the Greens policy, another $14.3 billion would come from targeting property investors, with the capital gains tax discount phased out over five years, and negative gearing scrapped for future purchases and phased out for multiple properties.

Trusts would be taxed as large corporations, at a 30% rate, raising $3.8 billion over the forward estimates.

The policy says: “Despite what the Liberals say, Australia is a low taxing nation. It is the 8th lowest-taxed among the 35 OECD nations. Australia’s combined tax-to-GDP ratio is 28.2% for all levels of government in 2015. The OECD average is 34%.

“If Australia collected the same amount of tax as the average OECD nation then we would need to collect an additional $94 billion per year”.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale said that Australia had a “tax avoidance system” rather than a “tax system”.

“Big corporations and the super-rich have rigged the rules for themselves, and the old parties are too frightened to do anything about it.

“Big corporate donations, vested interests and the revolving door between parliament and big business has made it so that the wealthier corporations and individuals get richer and richer, while inequality just gets worse”.

The Greens oppose the corporate tax cuts and advocate changes to the petroleum resource rent tax, ending fossil fuel subsidies, mainly paid to multinational mining companies, and the introduction of a mining super profits tax at a rate of 40%.

They put forward measures to target corporate tax avoidance, saying it is estimated corporations avoid about $8 billion of tax a year.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Income inequality ticks down as the rich see their incomes fall: ABS

A decline in incomes for the top 20% has caused inequality to fall slightly.
Shutterstock

Peter Whiteford, Australian National University

Income inequality has dropped slightly in Australia, largely driven by a fall in incomes for the richest 20% of the population, according to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Survey of Household Income and Wealth.

The richest 20% of the population have seen their real disposable incomes (adjusted for the number of people living in the household) fall by nearly 5%, or close to A$100 per week. Most other households have seen no real increase in their incomes over the two years since the previous survey was released.

Our recent public debate over whether inequality is rising or falling ran into the problem that the two most important sources of data were showing different trends. The ABS survey continues to show a higher level of income inequality than the HILDA survey, but the latest trends now look more similar.

Possibly the best characterisation of the latest ABS figures is that they show inequality remains higher than at any period before 2007-08, but in the short term it is unclear what to expect.

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Read more: Here’s why it’s so hard to say whether inequality is going up or down

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As you can see in the following chart, there has been a slight fall in income inequality between 2013-14 and 2015-16, with the Gini coefficient for “Equivalised Disposable Household Income” falling from 0.333 to 0.323. The Gini coefficient is a measure between zero (where all households have the same income) and one (where only one household claims all the income).

Equivalised Disposable Household Income is the total income of the household from all sources including social security payments, minus direct taxes, and then adjusted for the number of people living in the household. For example, a household of a couple with two children under the age of 15 is assumed to need 2.1 times the income of a household of a single adult to achieve the same standard of living.

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So what explains these most recent trends? At this stage, it’s difficult to be definitive. It should also be borne in mind that it has only been two years since the last survey, the overall change is not large, and so we should be cautious in unpacking the trends.

But it is worth noting that this small reduction in income inequality has come at the same time as a small fall in both median and mean disposable incomes for Australian households.

The average taxes paid by households have also risen slightly in real terms (adjusted for inflation) since 2013-14, while the average social security benefits have stayed the same in real terms. This masks a significant drop in the real level of family payments (such as the family tax benefit) received by households, and increases in age pensions and “other payments” (overseas pensions and benefits, partner allowance, sickness allowance, special benefit, war widow pension (DVA), widow allowance, and wife pensions etc.).

However, where there does appear to be large changes are in the sources of income for households. If we compare incomes between the 2013-14 and 2015-16 surveys, we find that the only group that has enjoyed real increases in incomes are those whose main source of income is social security benefits. But these have risen by only A$6 per week, or about 1.3%, and they remain by far the lowest income households in Australia, with their average incomes remaining less than half of all other household groups.

Households who mainly rely on wages and salaries have seen their average real disposable incomes fall by about A$17 per week, or about 1.4%.

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The biggest declines are among those who mainly rely on self-employment income from unincorporated businesses – usually a small business which has not incorporated as a registered company – and people whose main source of income is “other”.

“Other” includes many things, such as income received as a result of ownership of financial assets (interest, dividends), and of non-financial assets (rent, royalties), as well as from sources such as incorporated business income (i.e. companies), superannuation, child support, workers’ compensation and scholarships.

This group is fairly small – about 8% of households, but they are both the group with the highest and most unequal incomes and by far the highest level of net worth (assets minus liabilities). Their average incomes have fallen by around A$93 a week in real terms, or around 8%, but their median real incomes rose by around A$11 per week, suggesting that the loss in income was concentrated among higher income households in this group.

This group in 2013-14 had by far the highest level of income inequality with a Gini coefficient of 0.474. This has fallen to 0.423 in 2015-16. But because a lot of this income comes from the stockmarket, we can expect it to be more volatile.

The group who appear to have lost by far the most, however, are households whose main source of income is unincorporated business income. This is an even smaller group – around 4.6% of all households in 2015-16. Their real average incomes have fallen by more than A$160 per week, or around 16%. They also have a high level of inequality within their group, with a Gini coefficient of 0.353 in 2015-16, down from 0.389 two years previously.

But the overall change in income inequality is not large, and it does not significantly change Australia’s international ranking.

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Writing in the Australian yesterday, Nick Cater of the Menzies Research Centre asserted that Australia is “one of the most equal and socially mobile nations on earth”. But even with the slight reduction in inequality, we are slightly above the OECD average, and there are around 20 OECD countries who are likely to have lower levels of income inequality than Australia.

Overall, the data shows a relatively small change in incomes for employee households and for households whose main source of income is social security payments. Together, these account for 87% of all households in Australia.

The reduction in overall income inequality in this period is therefore explained by the falls in income for the self-employed and for the “other” group – the group with the highest incomes and wealth.

Understanding what exactly has been happening for these groups and why will require further time and analysis. The volatility of the income sources for these groups is another reason to be cautious about projecting future trends.

Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

What income inequality looks like across Australia

Nicholas Biddle, Australian National University and Francis Markham, Australian National University

With affordable houses increasingly out of reach, wage growth slow and household debt high, Australians are certainly feeling poor. But how do they compare to their neighbours? New Census data confirms there’s a lot of variability in income.

The Census breaks the country up into 349 geographic regions (named in quote marks below), some of which cover more than one major town and some of which group related suburbs within cities. We examined 331 of these regions, excluding those containing fewer than 1,000 households.

The data show there are high levels of income inequality within these regions. A simple way to measure this is to look at the ratio of income between those who are well off (the top 20% within a region) and of those who are relatively disadvantaged (the bottom 20%) in the Census data. In Australia the weekly household income for the top 20% (A$1,579 per week) is 3.5 times the income of the bottom 20% (A$457).

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The “Melbourne City” region has the most unequal incomes in Australia, where the top 20% have an income that is 8.3 times as high as those in the bottom 20%. “Adelaide City” (ratio of 5.5) and the “Sydney Inner City” (4.8) also have quite high levels of inequality.

Two of the poorest regions in the Northern Territory also have very high inequality. These are the vast region that encircles Darwin, called “Daly, Tiwi, West Arnhem” (ratio of 5.2) and the “East Arnhem” region (5.3).

However, there are regions with varying income levels, that also had relatively low inequality ratios. The region of “Molonglo”, in South Canberra (ratio of 2.2), “West Pilbara” in Western Australia (2.4) and “Kempsey, Nambucca” on New South Wales’ north coast (2.5) all have low levels of inequality.

For our analysis, we used equivalised household income. Equivalisation is a technique in which members of a household receive different weightings, based on the amount of additional resources they need.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics assumes that the first adult in a household has a weighting of 1, each additional adult a weighting of 0.5, and each child a weighting of 0.3. Total household income is then divided by the sum of the weightings for a representative income.

Incomes across Australia

For the whole of Australia, the equivalised median household income (the income in the middle of the distribution) is A$878 per week. The region with the lowest median income was “Daly, Tiwi, West Arnhem” in the Northern Territory, at A$510 per week.

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However, several regional areas like “Maryborough, Pyrenees” (northwest of Ballarat in Victoria), “Kempsey, Nambucca” (NSW), “Maryborough” (between Bundaberg and the Sunshine Coast in Queensland), “Inverell, Tenterfield” (in NSW’s Northern Tablelands) and “South East Coast” in Tasmania all had median incomes of A$575 per week or less.

At the other end of the distribution, households in leafy suburbs of North Sydney – “Mosman” (NSW) had a median income of A$1,767 per week. Areas like “South Canberra” (ACT), “Manly” (in Sydney’s east) and the mining-dominated “West Pilbara” (WA) all had median incomes of A$1,674 or more per week.

We also looked at the extremes of the distribution. We define high income as those households with an income of A$1,500 or more per week. This equates to about 22% of the population. We defined low-income households as having an income of less than A$400 per week (about 14% of households).

Around 40% of households in the “Daly, Tiwi, West Arnhem” region were classified as being in poverty compared to around 6% in “North Sydney, Mosman” region. Conversely, around 60% of households in this region were classified as having high income, compared with only 6% of households in “Kempsey, Nambucca”.

How segregated are we within regions and cities?

While government policy is often delivered at the regional level, people live their lives at the local or neighbourhood level. However, the relatively disadvantaged and the upper-middle class are often segregated within these regions.

Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institute argues the segregation of the upper-middle class in Australia means this group “hoards” the benefits in the region they live in. Among the location advantages he lists are: access to the best schools, opportunities to network with the wealthy and powerful and the ability to disproportionately accrue capital gains on housing assets. To avoid this kind of “opportunity hoarding”, the rich and poor would need to be evenly spread within a region.

A simple way to look at this is through a “dissimilarity index”. In essence, this measures the evenness with which two groups are spread across a larger area. It ranges from zero to one, with higher values indicating a more uneven distribution and zero indicating complete mixing.

Looking at the distribution of the high income. Across Australia, the dissimilarity index has a value of 0.27. This means that around 27% of high-income households would have to move neighbourhoods to make the distribution completely even.

This varies quite substantially by region. “Far North” (encompassing Cape York in QLD) has a dissimilarity index of 0.42. “Auburn” (in western suburbs of Sydney, NSW) and “Playford” (on Adelaide’s northern fringe) also have quite large values.

Our richest regions tend to have the most even distribution of the wealthy, with “North Sydney, Mosman”, “Molonglo” and “Manly” having values of 0.06 or less.

“East Arnhem” has a very high level of concentration of low income individuals by neighbourhood, with a dissimilarity index of 0.70. The next two highest regions (“Katherine” and “Alice Springs”) are also in the Northern Territory, with index values of 0.53 and 0.55 respectively.

We can also compare the measures we used, to find out how they relate to each other. The following figure shows that the richest regions tend to be those with the highest level of income inequality.

However, as inequality goes up, there tends to be a greater concentration of low income households by neighbourhood (there’s also less of a concentration of high income households).

Have and have nots

It’s true that the level of income mobility is higher in Australia than it is in the US. However, Australia also has prominent examples of economic policies that disproportionately benefit the upper-middle class, such as the capital gains tax discount and superannuation tax incentives.

Australia also has a geographically concentrated income distribution, with the rich living in neighbourhoods with other rich people. The poor are also more likely to live in close proximity to people who share their disadvantage.

If Richard Reeves is right, and the spatial segregation of high and low income households reinforces inequality across the generations, then policies that encourage the mixing of different social classes in the same neighbourhood and region should be a way forward.

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This article was put together with research assistance from Hubert Wu, Australian National University and Harvard University.

Nicholas Biddle, Associate Professor, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University and Francis Markham, Research Fellow, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Income inequality exists in Australia, but the true picture may not be as bad as you thought

Wealth inequality remains a problem in Australia, but it is lower now than in the years leading up to the GFC.
Flickr/Sacha Fernandez, CC BY-NC-SA

Roger Wilkins, University of Melbourne

We hear a lot about inequality in Australia but the true picture is much more complicated than the headlines usually suggest.

The data indicate that wealth inequality has grown but is lower now than before the global financial crisis (GFC). And while the personal incomes of the very rich have gone up, overall household income inequality has barely shifted since the start of this century.

Economic inequality refers to the extent to which material well-being differs across people – how rich are the rich, how poor are the poor. But there are different ways to be rich, and different ways to be poor.

Income inequality is about the gap between people with high incomes and low incomes. Wealth inequality, on the other hand, looks at the gap between people with high net worth (for example, a lot of houses, stocks or other assets) and people with low net worth (few or no assets). People could have very similar incomes but be at opposite ends of the scale when it comes to their wealth, for example.

In practice, attention typically focuses on income inequality, although it is also important to consider wealth inequality.

Since 2000-01, there have been three key data sources for examining income inequality in Australia: the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) Household Income and Wealth surveys, the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey that the Melbourne Institute has been running since 2001, and the Australian Taxation Office’s tax records data.

The first two can also be used to examine wealth inequality.

For various reasons, the three data sets do not tell exactly the same story about income inequality trends since the beginning of this century. Nonetheless, there are some key conclusions we can draw.

1. The top 1% got richer, faster – but overall household income inequality has barely changed

The first conclusion is that the personal incomes of the very rich have grown somewhat more strongly than the personal incomes of the rest of the population.

For example, data compiled by the World Wealth and Income Database (WID World) show that the share of income going to the top 1% rose from 7.5% in 2000-01 to 9% in 2013-14.

WID World

Despite this increase in inequality of personal incomes at the top, measures of overall inequality of household incomes (as opposed to personal incomes) show relatively little net change this century.

One way to track this is to look at the Gini co-efficient, a commonly used measure of inequality that ranges from zero to one. Zero means total equality, with everyone on the same income. A Gini coefficient of one means complete inequality, the equivalent of one person having all the income.

HILDA survey data show that Australia’s Gini coefficient was 0.303 in 2000-01 and 0.296 in 2014-15. In other words, it has barely shifted.

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The ABS income survey shows a small increase from 0.311 in 2000-01 to 0.333 in 2013-14, but this increase can be attributed to changes made by the ABS between 2003-04 and 2007-08 to the definition and measurement of income:

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Being a longitudinal study, the HILDA Survey also allows us to consider inequality in incomes measured over longer intervals than one year. Incomes can fluctuate from year to year, and so we may get an exaggerated picture of income inequality if we examine only annual income. Some people who appear poor in one year may in fact have high incomes in other years and so, overall, are not really poor.

The HILDA Survey indeed shows that inequality of income measured over five years is lower than inequality of annual income. However, of some concern is that measures of inequality of five-year income have been trending upwards since the early 2000s — although the increase is very slight.

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2. Wage inequality has increased

While that’s been happening, however, the labour market has become more unequal.

Wage inequality is typically thought of in terms of inequality in earnings per hour worked, while labour market inequality more broadly could be thought of as inequality in total (annual) earnings across all persons in the labour force.

Wage inequality has steadily risen and, moreover, the share of employment that is part-time has risen. Research published last year showed that the higher your pay relative to others, the more likely you are to get a better pay rise.

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On the surface, it is remarkable that the large rise in labour market inequality has not — at least, not yet — translated to large increases in income inequality.

The reasons for this are complex, but an important contributor has been the relative concentration of employment growth in low-income households.

Another potential reason why increased wage inequality has not translated to increases in income inequality is our system of progressive income taxes and transfers. However, this seems largely to not be the case in the 2000s in Australia, since the tax and transfer system actually became less redistributive (was doing less to reduce income inequality) over this period.

So while the tax and transfer system has probably moderated the effects of increased wage inequality on income inequality, it has not completely neutralised it.

3. Wealth inequality grew – but is lower now than in the years leading up to the GFC

In terms of wealth, both the ABS income surveys and the HILDA Survey indicate that wealth inequality grew strongly in the years leading up to the global financial crisis (GFC).

The HILDA Survey, which has collected detailed wealth data every four years since 2002, shows that the wealth required to be in the top 1% of the wealth distribution increased by 140% in real terms between 2002 and 2006. This was a period in which both house prices and the share market were rising strongly.

However, wealth inequality appears to have moderated slightly since the GFC, with the wealth required to be in the top 1% actually 9% lower in 2014 than in 2006. This appears to primarily derive from weaker share market performance. The ASX200, for example, was approximately 20% below its October 2007 peak in late 2014 (and even now is still over 10% below the peak).

Perception and reality

In light of the minimal changes in overall income inequality this century, and the evidence that wealth inequality is lower now than in the years leading up to the GFC, it is perhaps surprising that public perceptions appear to be that inequality is growing strongly.

Income inequality has grown in the US more sharply than it has in Australia.
World Wealth and Income Database WID World

Perhaps also important is that household income growth in Australia has slowed since 2008-09, and indeed has essentially stalled since 2011-12. In part, this reflects slowing wage growth, but also important has been relatively weak growth in employment, and in particular full-time employment.

For example, the forthcoming HILDA Survey Statistical Report will show that, at December 2015 prices, the median “equivalised” household income – that is, household income adjusted for household size – was A$46,031 in 2011-12 and was still only A$46,007 in 2014-15.

This stagnation in average living standards is arguably likely to lead to greater focus on the fairness of the income distribution.

Roger Wilkins, Professorial Research Fellow and Deputy Director (Research), HILDA Survey, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.