Notes on the data: Income support

Pensioner Concession Card holders, June 2023

Policy context: Entitlement to an Australian Government Pensioner Concession Card (PCC) is used here as a proxy for low socioeconomic status. People who hold a PCC include those in receipt of a number of pension and benefit types, with the largest group being those who are receiving the Age Pension. Other groups include people with disabilities, carers and sole parents. As PCC cardholders have some of the lowest incomes in the population they are also likely to have poorer health. Compared with those who have social and economic advantages, disadvantaged Australians are more likely to have shorter lives, experience higher levels of disease risk factors and use fewer preventive health services [1].

Reference

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). Australia’s health 2008. (AIHW Cat. no. AUS 99). Canberra: AIHW; 2008.

Notes: The PCC is available to people receiving any of the following payments:

Age Pension
Carer Payment
Disability Support Pension
JobSeeker Payment or Youth Allowance and are single, caring for a dependent child and looking for work
Parenting Payment single.

The data exclude details of Health Care Card holders and Commonwealth Seniors Health Card holders.

Population Health Area (PHA) data were derived from publicly-available data that were already suppressed at the Statistical Area Level 2 (SA2). Therefore, if a PHA included an SA2 with suppressed data, there could be an undercount in the PHA. As State and territory totals were also provided data, in the ‘Unknown’ data row in the Excel data workbooks are calculated from the difference between the sum of the PHA data and the State/Territory totals and include the sum of these suppressed SA2 cells. However, the loss of counts due to the use of this data set was negligible (less than 0.01% lost). As State and Territory totals were also provided, data in the ‘Unknown’ data row in the Excel data workbooks are calculated as the difference between the sum of the PHA data and the State/Territory totals; these figures therefore include the sum of the suppressed SA2 cells.

Data cells with counts of less than five were suppressed (confidentialised).

Geography: Data available by Population Health Area, Local Government Area, Primary Health Network, Quintile of socioeconomic disadvantage of area and Quintiles within PHNs, and Remoteness Area

Numerator: People in receipt of a Pensioner Concession Card from the Department of Human Services (Centrelink) at June 2022

Denominator: People aged 15 years and over at June 2022 (population data at June 2023 not available at time of publication)

Detail of analysis: Per cent

Source: Compiled by PHIDU based on data from DSS Payment Demographic Data, June 2023, available from https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/dss-payment-demographic-data, accessed 20 December 2023, and Australian Bureau of Statistics Estimated Resident Population, 30 June 2022.