'I wouldn't eat three meals a day': poverty findings heighten calls to maintain boosted jobseeker

Australians who relied on social security benefits were five times more likely to be living in poverty than others before the coronavirus pandemic, sparking calls to maintain the boosted rate of unemployment payments before an eventual overhaul of the system.

The Australian Council of Social Services’s Poverty in Australia report, released on Thursday, found being unemployed was the greatest risk factor to living in poverty, while people in paid work were also struggling owing to the increasing cost of raising children.

Overall, the report said two-thirds of those living in households where the main breadwinner was out of work lived below the poverty line, which is set at $457 a week for a single person.

Related: 'Time to click reset': coronavirus offers chance to end Australia's welfare wars

The research relies on data collected in 2018 and reflects analysis conducted under the pre-Covid-19 social security system, where the base rate of the jobseeker payment stood at about $275 a week.

In March the government introduced a $550-a-fortnight coronavirus supplement, effectively doubling jobseeker payments and other benefits.

Before the pandemic, campaigners including Acoss had been calling for a $95-a-week increase to the old Newstart payment but the massive temporary increase to the dole and changing economic conditions have made pre-Covid proposals increasingly irrelevant.

Acoss is yet to name a new figure it will seek on an increase to the jobseeker payment. Its acting chief executive, Jacqui Phillips, said the peak body was calling for the coronavirus supplement to “remain in place until we have a social security system that prevents poverty”.

“We must ensure that there is an income floor under which no one falls into poverty, regardless of their circumstances,” Phillips said. “The poverty line for a single person without children is around $500 per week, including housing costs.”

Households relying “mainly on social security payments are approximately five times more likely to experience poverty”, while 44% of sole-parent households live below the poverty line.

The highest poverty rates were found in homes where the main breadwinner received Newstart, now known as jobseeker.

More than half (57%) of Newstart recipients lived below the poverty line, as did a large proportion of those on the parenting payment (57%), the disability support pension (41)%, and the youth allowance.

Among them is a law student and youth allowance recipient Freya Pollard, 22, who said she had struggled to make ends meet while living with her mother in a sharehouse last year.

On top of her $300-a-fortnight payments, Pollard said she earned additional wages from her part-time job at a cafe, although a hip condition prevented her from working more than a few shifts a week.

“I wouldn’t eat three meals a day,” Pollard said. “Or I would save up for anything that I need.”

Pollard said she had been rarely able to go out with friends or look after her mental health by seeing her psychologist. “When you live such a long time on welfare benefits, you tend to normalise the kind of really degrading behaviour you revert to in order to live,” she said.

“The psychological effects of living in poverty, the stress, the guilt and the shame around your relationship with money, that affects your living conditions for the rest of your life.

“It’s not just a short-term thing. Living in poverty is not just something you pass through.”

Related: One in eight people in Australia living in poverty, report finds

Since April Pollard has been receiving the boosted youth allowance payment of $854.60 a fortnight, up from $304.60 before the pandemic. She said it was a “bit scary” knowing that the payments would reduce in September.

“I think they should keep the payment as is it now,” she said. “Even as it is now, it’s still only minimal. When they go back to what they were before, it’s really going to set me back.”

About 1.3 million people are now on the boosted jobseeker payment, up from about 700,000 who received the standard rate of about $275 a week in 2018.

Given that the Australian government does not have an official poverty measure, the University of New South Wales researchers used the relative poverty line of 50% of median household income.

This month a Senate inquiry report into the adequacy of unemployment benefits called for the government to establish an official poverty measure.