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Working but Poor? Low Pay and Poverty in Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Tony Eardley
Tony Eardley*
Affiliation:
Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales
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Abstract

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The decentralisation of wage bargaining in Australia has led to a widening of the earnings gap. There has been talk of a new phenomenon of ‘working poverty’, where incomes in a significant number of households fall below the poverty line even when family members are in paid employment. This paper examines the growth of working poverty in Australia from the beginning of the 1980s to the mid-1990s. The analysis suggests that the phenomenon of working poverty is real and has been growing. Low pay on an hourly basis does not in itself equal poverty, and the biggest increase in family poverty has been among employees not in low pay. Yet the proportion of low-paid workers who are also in poor families has grown considerably. In the light of these findings the paper discusses the possible impact of policy approaches such as tax credits and higher minimum wages.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , December 2000 , pp. 308 - 338
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2000

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank George Matheson, who carried out much of the ABS unit record analysis on which this paper is based, Ceri Evans for additional assistance, and the anonymous referee for helpful comments. Responsibility for any errors in the interpretation of data remains that of the author.

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