EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Monetary and Multidimensional Poverty in Australia: A Dual Measurement Approach

Melek Cigdem‐Bayram, Cara Nolan, Ismo Rama and Nicole Bieske

Australian Economic Review, 2025, vol. 58, issue S1, S72-S85

Abstract: Australia's 2024 poverty rate is the highest it has been since 2001. Despite a lack of official poverty measures, recent data has shown that poverty affects 14.4% of the population including one in six children. These rates are higher than when Australia became a signatory of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in 2015, steering it further off course from the goal of halving the proportion of the population living below the national poverty line by 2030. Without an agreed‐upon national definition and measures of poverty, it is also hard to meaningfully track progress. Marking the 50th anniversary of the Henderson Inquiry First Main Report, which first called for a national poverty measure, this paper revisits that call with new urgency. Drawing on Australia's current context and international examples, it proposes a dual approach to poverty measurement – monetary and multidimensional – and presents empirical findings from an illustrative model applying both. The paper examines the relationship between monetary and multidimensional poverty and the insights gained by measuring the two side‐by‐side that neither can yield in isolation. It concludes with recommendations for a legislated national poverty measure, informed by lessons from Canada and New Zealand, which implemented similar frameworks in recent years.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8462.70023

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ausecr:v:58:y:2025:i:s1:p:s72-s85

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://ordering.onl ... 7-8462&ref=1467-8462

Access Statistics for this article

Australian Economic Review is currently edited by John de New, Viet Hoang Nguyen and Susan Méndez

More articles in Australian Economic Review from The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().

 
Page updated 2025-08-21
Handle: RePEc:bla:ausecr:v:58:y:2025:i:s1:p:s72-s85