Over 3.2 million Australian nationals constituting 13.6 percent of the population live below the poverty line, which is the worst poverty rate among other wealthy states in the world, according to a new report by the Australian Council of Social Service
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st February, 2020) Over 3.2 million Australian nationals constituting 13.6 percent of the population live below the poverty line, which is the worst poverty rate among other wealthy states in the world, according to a new report by the Australian Council of Social Service.
This figure includes over 770,000 children under the age of 15, which is nearly 18 percent of all children in Australia.
"It's not right that in Australia, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, more than three million people, including three quarters of a million children, are living in poverty. We want to support each other. It's who we are as a nation. But our economy is leaving people behind, with persistently high poverty rates despite decades of uninterrupted economic growth," the council's CEO, Cassandra Goldie, said, as quoted in the report.
In Australia, the poverty line is $457 per week for a single adult and the difference between the incomes of people in poverty in various types of families and the poverty line is $282 per week, the authors of the report found.
According to the advocacy group, the government can reduce poverty by boosting growth in jobs and assist with housing costs, which are among the highest in the world.
