Mapping the Australian Poverty Profile: A Multidimensional Deprivation Approach

Abstract

The limitations of income‐based poverty lines are widely acknowledged, but Australia lags behind many other countries in implementing new measures of social disadvantage based on the deprivation approach. A new suite of questions included in wave 14 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey allows the deprivation approach to be applied. This article describes the advantages of the deprivation approach and shows that while the income and deprivation approaches can produce similar overall results, the circumstances of some sub‐groups vary greatly according to which measure is used. A measure based on deprivation alone and/or a combined measure would be an important complement to conventional income‐based poverty rates.