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DSS Payment Demographic Data

The DSS Payment Demographic data set is made up of:

Selected DSS payment data by

  • Geography: state/territory, electorate, postcode, LGA and SA2 (for 2015 onwards)

  • Demographic: age, sex and Indigenous/non-Indigenous

  • Duration on Payment (Working Age & Pensions)

  • Duration on Income Support (Working Age, Carer payment & Disability Support Pension)

  • Rate (Working Age & Pensions)

  • Earnings (Working Age & Pensions)

  • Age Pension assets data

  • JobSeeker Payment and Youth Allowance (other) Principal Carers

  • Activity Tested Recipients by Partial Capacity to Work (NSA,PPS & YAO)

  • Exits within 3, 6 and 12 months (Newstart Allowance/JobSeeker Payment, Parenting Payment, Sickness Allowance & Youth Allowance)

  • Disability Support Pension by medical condition

  • Care Receiver by medical conditions

  • Commonwealth Rent Assistance by Payment type and Income Unit type have been added from March 2017. For further information about Commonwealth Rent Assistance and Income Units see the Data Descriptions and Glossary included in the dataset.

  • Commonwealth Electorate Division has been updated to reflect the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) 2018 boundaries from March 2019.

  • SA2 has been updated to reflect the Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) 2016 boundaries from March 2019. Prior to this Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) 2011 was used.

  • From March 2017 the DSS demographic dataset will include top 25 countries of birth. For further information see the glossary.

From March 2016 machine readable files containing the three geographic breakdowns have also been published for use in National Map, links to these datasets are below:

Pre June 2014 Quarter Data contains:

Selected DSS payment data by

  • Geography: state/territory; electorate; postcode and LGA

  • Demographic: age, sex and Indigenous/non-Indigenous

Note: JobSeeker Payment replaced Newstart Allowance and other working age payments from 20 March 2020, for further details see: https://www.dss.gov.au/benefits-payments/jobseeker-payment

For data on DSS payment demographics as at June 2013 or earlier, the department has published data which was produced annually. Data is provided by payment type containing timeseries’, state, gender, age range, and various other demographics. Links to these publications are below:

Concession card data in the March and June 2020 quarters have been re-stated to address an over-count in reported cardholder numbers.

Data and Resources

Additional Info

Field Value
Title DSS Payment Demographic Data
Type Dataset
Language English
Licence Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia
Data Status active
Update Frequency quarterly
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/cff2ae8a-55e4-47db-a66d-e177fe0ac6a0
Date Published 2014-07-02
Date Updated 2021-02-25
Contact Point
Department of Social Services
data.requests@dss.gov.au
Temporal Coverage 2013-09-01 - 2019-09-27
Geospatial Coverage Australia
Jurisdiction Commonwealth of Australia
Data Portal data.gov.au
Publisher/Agency Department of Social Services