Welfare Recipient Patterns Among Migrants

Locational patterns of migrants eligible for welfare assistance

The best guide to the residential locations of those eligible for welfare assistance is the residential pattern of migrants by the various EP groups. Since migrants from EP3 and 4 category birthplaces are those most likely to need assistance, any concentrations of these groups imply parallel concentrations of those requiring welfare help.

Table 9 indicates the residential location of each EP group by the age groups 25-44 and 45-64. The focus is on the capital cities because most migrants have settled in these cities.

Table 9 - Percentage of EP group aged 25-44 years and 45-64 years, living in major cities and rest of Australia.

Table 9 shows that migrants from EP3 and 4 category birthplaces are concentrated in Melbourne and Sydney. As of mid-1996, 21.2 per cent of Australia's population lived in Sydney and 17.9 per cent lived in Melbourne — 39 per cent in total.

By comparison, some 80 per cent of EP group 4 migrants aged between 25 and 64 lived in Melbourne or Sydney and over 70 per cent of those in EP group 3.

Very few of these migrants lived in Perth or Brisbane or any other locations in Australia. There is a significant concentration of EP group 1 migrants in Perth and Brisbane but, as we have seen, the welfare needs of migrants in the EP1 category are relatively low.

Table 10 provides information on welfare-recipient rates by EP group for Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane and Australia as a whole. As would be expected from the earlier analysis, these rates are much higher for EP groups 3 and 4 than for EP groups 1 and 2.

The welfare-recipient rates for EP groups 3 and 4 in Melbourne and Sydney approximate the Australian level, though the rates in Melbourne are somewhat higher than the national rates for migrants in these groups. In the case of Sydney the rates are generally lower than the Australian rates for these two EP groups.

Given the high concentration of EP groups 3 and 4 in Melbourne and Sydney, it follows that there are large numbers of migrants needing welfare assistance located in these cities. By contrast, there are relatively small numbers of EP groups 3 and 4 in Perth and Brisbane (Table 9). Those who do live in Perth show the lowest welfare-recipient rates of the four cities (Table 10).

Table 10 - Welfare recipient rates for men aged 24-44 years and 45-64 years, by EP group for Australia's major cities.

The question of whether the migrants needing welfare assistance within Australian cities are concentrated in particular residential areas within these cities is another matter. To explore this issue, a detailed analysis of the distribution of welfare recipients by birthplace by locality expressed as a ratio of the relevant population by the same locality was required.

Data meeting these criteria were only available for Melbourne and Sydney to Statistical Local Area (SLA) level. In addition the range of countries for which such data were held was limited. Thus no analysis by EP category was possible to the SLA level.

Instead welfare-recipient rates by major country of birth for the age groups 15-24, 25-44, 45-64 and 65+ by sex to SLA level for Melbourne and Sydney were computed for 1996. Even at this level, the data generated were voluminous. The following commentary summarises the results.

Studies based on the 1996 Census have shown that within Melbourne and Sydney, recent arrivals from birthplaces included in the EP 4 category, or those arriving predominantly in the 1950s and 1960s (the EP3 group), tend to concentrate in particular suburban areas.