Welfare Recipient Patterns Among Migrants

Executive summary

This is the first study of pensions and benefits paid by the Commonwealth Government which details recipient rates for migrants by time of arrival in Australia, age, sex, country of birth and English language capacity.

Since World War Two there has been a periodic debate about the appropriate form of government assistance to migrants. Views have oscillated between two poles; one that migrant services should be 'mainstreamed', with migrants treated the same as all other Australians, and the other that, because of their distinctive language and cultural needs, ethnic specific services should be provided to some migrants.

The emphasis was more on ethnic specific services at the time of the Galbally Report in 1978 and for a few years thereafter. However since the mid-1980s there has been a swing back towards mainstreaming.

At the time of this study, all migrants, including those who were recent arrivals, were eligible for the full range of Australian welfare benefits (subject to various residency requirements). To the extent that migrants needed assistance outside their families, they relied on the same Commonwealth benefits and pensions that were available to all Australians.

The level of eligibility for these benefits has been a subject of great controversy. The purpose of this study is to provide a firm data foundation which will help resolve this controversy and contribute to relevant policy in the area.

Data Sources

The data are based on Department of Family and Community Services (then Department of Social Security (DSS)) records of pension and benefit recipients which have been matched as near as possible to the date of the 1996 Census (August 1996).

The two databases provide matching numerators and denominators and thus make possible calculations of welfare-recipient rates by birthplace, time of arrival in Australia, sex and locality for 1996. No similar data will be available until the records of the 2001 Census are released.

Unfortunately, neither the Census nor the DSS files indicate the visa category of overseas-born persons. Therefore any interpretations in reference to such categories must be made with caution. The data also precede the introduction of the current Coalition Government's two-year moratorium on most welfare payments to all arriving migrants except those entering under the humanitarian category. Thus recipient rates for recent arrivals as of 1996 do not reflect the present situation.

Partly because of the voluminous nature of the country of birth calculations, many of the findings are presented in just English Proficiency (EP) groups. These are divided into:

• EP1 which includes those from Main English Speaking countries where at least 98 per cent of immigrants speak 'good' English and have at least 10,000 residents in Australia,
• EP2 which includes those countries for which at least 80 per cent of recent arrivals indicated at the time of the 1996 Census that they spoke English well,
• EP3 which includes countries where 50 to 80 per cent of recent arrivals indicated that they spoke English well, and
• EP4 which covers the remaining countries where less than 50 per cent of recent arrivals stated at the 1996 Census that they spoke English well.