Poor Show: Economic Disparities and the Working Poor in Australia

By Frank Stilwell

Australian society has commonly been described as the "wage earners welfare state". The inference drawn being that full employment is the normal state and that welfare services need only be focussed on those out of the workforce - the elderly and sick, the disabled, the temporarily unemployed, for example.

Current political economic trends challenge this comfortable view. The growth of the 'working poor' is symptomatic of the breakdown of the conventional model. Increasing numbers of people are employed in low-paid, often casual or part-time jobs. Disparities between the wages of different occupations have widened. A pool of long-term unemployed has become a seemingly permanent feature of the economic scene. The willingness and capacity of governments to maintain social security expenditures - now comprising 43% of all Australian government spending - is also under strain.

Stilwell outlines the causes of greater disparities, and its impact of different parts of the population (on women in particular) and different household types. Policies and political changes needed to reverse the trends are also outlined.

(Overland no. 170; Autumn 2003)

This issue of overland looks at BLUDGERS: corporate welfare and the Working Poor and is a great read. It also contains the Overland Memorial Lecture given this year by Humphey McQueen on "Making Capitals Tick"