In such a rich country, it is shameful how many Australians on jobseeker are dying in desperate poverty | Greg Jericho

Stunning new data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) shows the abysmally low rate of jobseeker means at least 3,000 more unemployed Australians die each year than would be the case were they not purposefully kept in poverty.

We often talk about how tough it is for those on jobseeker. But last week a report from the AIHW titled “Mortality outcomes among people receiving income support” shows talk is cheap when people are dying.

The report found that Australians on jobseeker are up to 10 times more likely to die than those not on welfare support.

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In 2022, the rate of deaths for 35- to 44-year-olds not living on welfare support was 30 per 100,000. By contrast, the rate was 288 per 100,000 for those on jobseeker – 9.6 times greater.

Can someone explain why – in an economy in which the central bank has decided we need almost 700,000 people to be unemployed – those people live in such dreadful poverty that it can make you up to 10 times more likely to die in the prime of your life?

The Reserve Bank believes we need unemployment to be 4.5% to 5% to keep inflation stable. At that level, they believe total household income is such that we won’t buy too much stuff and there won’t be a wages breakout.

It’s not just the RBA: every government since 1996 has been more than happy to ensure the gap between the unemployment benefits and poverty has either grown or remained well above what it was when Bob Hawke and Paul Keating were in power:

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Currently, jobseeker payments are almost half the poverty line – roughly $300 a week less than what would be needed for a single person to be right on the poverty line. The only time this was not the case was during the Covid pandemic when the Morrison government effectively doubled jobseeker temporarily.

During 2020, the death rate of those on jobseeker dropped 32% from 328 people per 100,000 the previous year to 224 people per 100,000:

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It is too simplistic to say the doubling of jobseeker in 2020 was the reason the death rate dropped. A big factor was that the number of people unemployed almost doubled due to the Covid lockdowns. This group had not come from the level of poverty the usual cohort of unemployed people had, and as a result would likely be healthier.

Crucially, however, being unemployed did not automatically sentence them to poverty.

We therefore cannot say just how big of an impact the doubling of the payment had unless we were able to strip out the numbers of “unemployed due only to lockdowns”.

But while we cannot attribute the doubling of jobseeker to the drop in the death rate, that should not stop our anger at the higher death rates of those on unemployment benefits – and the disparity is getting larger.

In 2019, 328 people died per 100,000 of those on jobseeker. This fell to 224 in 2020, but then rose straight away to 300 the following year and then again to 326 in 2022. Conversely, over the same period, the rate of deaths for those aged 22-64 and not on welfare kept falling.

It means that the likelihood of dying for all unemployed people aged 22-64 is now nearly five times greater compared with those not on welfare – the biggest gap in the AIHW report:

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The 2020 figure when jobseeker was doubled does however give us a good base to work from to estimate just how many more people on jobseeker die because they live in poverty.

The cruelty of poverty is that it sentences those in it to a poorer diet, less access to healthcare, less ability to afford exercise activities such as gym and sport club memberships, and as a result a much higher morbidity rate.

In 2022, 3,985 people on jobseeker died. If instead of dying at a rate of 326 per 100,000, the rate was the same as it was in 2020, then 1,246 fewer people would have died (a total of 2,739).

But let us lift our standards. There really is no reason why people on jobseeker should die more often than those not on welfare.

We are a rich country with supposedly universal healthcare. Raising jobseeker to the poverty line (about $37,000 a year) would cost roughly $11bn this year. For comparison, this year the Treasury estimates the richest 10% (people earning more than $162,000) will get about $22.5bn in superannuation tax breaks.

If those on jobseeker died at the same rate as those not on welfare payments, in 2022 just 817 people would have died – 3,168 fewer than in reality:

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Poverty kills. And the way to lift people out of poverty is to lift the unemployment payment (and other forms of welfare).

Raising the level of jobseeker would save thousands of lives.