Thursday, December 31, 2015

Income support by age


The graph above depicts incomes support by age.

I had to make it double axis or it would have been very tall.

The left-hand axis and grey columns show numbers of Super and Veteran pension recipients.

The right-hand axis and coloured lines show numbers of working-age benefit recipients.

Obviously the growth in Super is large at 49% between 2005 and 2015. In behind the 64+ is a steady but small rise of 55-64 year-olds. Interesting that that age band did not change with the recession. Probably because most are not working due to some form of physical incapacity. Their numbers are not affected by changes in the labour market.

The 18-24 and 40-54 are more-or-less back to where the number lay in 2005 (though the rates would be lower as the relevant populations are higher).

The biggest drop in any age group is among 25-39. This is probably partly due to the growth rate in sole parent employment.

It's great that working age benefit numbers are declining albeit slowly. Currently 10.2% of the 18-64 population relies on a benefit. In 2005 it was 12%; in 2000 it was near to 17%

But we need those numbers to keep falling because government expenditure on income support for 64+ will continue to climb quite steeply over the coming years.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I had to make it double axis or it would have been very tall.

So? at least it would have presented the truth: that there are twice as many codger-bludgers than dole-bludgers of all kinds --- and all the codger bludgers vote.

Of course, this chart is deeply misleading in three other ways:
- it doesn't count for the biggest working age bludge: "working" for families
- it doesn't count the other two huge expenses for adults 25-45 --- health & education for their kids
- it undercounts the ruinously expensive healthcare for those codger-bludgers, especially in the last year.