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Homeownership has traditionally been high in Australia, where a broad range of tax and social security concessions are designed to promote ownership and reduce housing costs for owners. These have allowed homeowning age pensioners to avoid poverty despite receiving a pension that is low by international standards among high‐income countries. This approach provides the fourth pillar of the Australian retirement income support system, an example of 'Australian exceptionalism'. We examine recent trends in two measures of social disadvantage—poverty and deprivation—focusing on the changing role and impact of homeownership and housing costs. The comparisons reveal important differences in how housing costs are incorporated into the estimation of their impact and in how different social groups have fared, although our findings also indicate that the groups with highest incidence of poverty and deprivation have benefited least from the gains that others experienced over the period examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4932.2009.00565.x Byline: PETER SAUNDERS, YUVISTHI NAIDOO Keywords: I32; I38; H55 Abstract: Controversy over the setting of poverty lines and its narrow focus on income has undermined the influence of poverty research on policy. The deprivation approach overcomes these limitations by identifying deprivation as an inability to afford items that receive majority support for being essential. This paper estimates the incidence of deprivation and compares the results with those produced using a conventional poverty framework. The results confirm overseas findings by showing that the groups most deprived differ from those with the highest poverty rates and that there is a low degree of overlap between income poverty and deprivation. Older people show up as faring better under the deprivation approach, while working-age individuals and families fare worse and the relative position of the most highly disadvantaged groups are worse in terms of deprivation than in terms of poverty. Deprivation also provides a clearer differentiation between those who can and cannot afford specific necessities than a classification based on low income, and is also shown to vary systematically with several indicators of subjective well-being. Estimates of consistent poverty that combine low income with deprivation are shown to differ from conventional (income-based) poverty rates, and provide the basis for future poverty measures. Article note: Peter Saunders, Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia. Email: P.Saunders@unsw.edu.au

Income‐based studies of child poverty treat children and young people as effectively invisible and determine the poverty status of families or households on the basis of information that is provided by, and is primarily about, adults. In contrast, the consensual deprivation approach provides a way of developing measures that reflect the views of children about what constitutes poverty and can be applied to data that children themselves provide. This paper extends earlier Australian studies of adult deprivation by applying a similar approach to children aged 11–17 attending a NSW government high school. Focus groups were conducted with children to help identify items regarded as essential for all children, and the results informed the development of a survey that was completed by over 2,600 students. The survey asked about 24 items, 18 of which were retained after statistical testing, and these items form the basis of the deprivation analysis. The findings indicate that a substantial proportion of survey respondents experience either or both of material deprivation and social exclusion. A new Child Deprivation Index (CDI) is developed and used to compare the circumstances of different groups, highlighting some of the factors that are associated with higher levels of deprivation and providing some initial pointers to possible underlying causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The standard of living of older people is a critical policy matter, given Australia's ageing population. Conventional living standard assessments continue to rely on disposable income as a defining indicator, despite it not encompassing the full range of potential consumption possibilities that affect an individual's economic living standard. This article proposes a series of three economic resource metrics that sequentially append the disposable income metric with the value of non-cash benefits and services arising from the receipt of public goods and/or services from home ownership in the form of a 'full' income metric, and then the inclusion of wealth in the form of two derived 'potential consumption' metrics. Using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, the findings demonstrate that augmenting disposable income with income streams from non-cash services and annuitised wealth substantially improves the relative economic position of older Australians. It also highlights the heterogeneity in economic living standard outcomes for different demographic sub-groups of older people that would otherwise be drawn using a disposable income analytic lens. The article argues that an expanded economic resource perspective is necessary for informing ageing and social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The limitations of income‐based poverty lines are widely acknowledged, but Australia lags behind many other countries in implementing new measures of social disadvantage based on the deprivation approach. A new suite of questions included in wave 14 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey allows the deprivation approach to be applied. This article describes the advantages of the deprivation approach and shows that while the income and deprivation approaches can produce similar overall results, the circumstances of some sub‐groups vary greatly according to which measure is used. A measure based on deprivation alone and/or a combined measure would be an important complement to conventional income‐based poverty rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]