Department of Social Services’s 2017 Valuation Report provides insights into how the current Australian population is likely to use welfare in the future. The report is part of the work undertaken by the Department to implement the Australian Priority Investment Approach to social welfare with the aim of reducing welfare dependency and improving the lifetime wellbeing of people and families in Australia.

The actuarial valuation provides a long term perspective of the financial commitments implicit in the current welfare system and provides information on:

  • The future cost of the system (lifetime cost).
  • How the different payment types (programs) contribute to this overall cost.
  • The factors which drive the overall lifetime cost and annual expenditures.
  • How the cost is changing over time, which provides information on the financial sustainability of the system.
  • The impact of changes, both to the welfare system and to external drivers of the system experience.
  • How different groups of people within the system contribute to the overall cost.
  • The factors which explain why some groups of people have different levels of expected payment utilisation than others

The national future lifetime welfare bill is estimated to be $4,681 billion as at 30 June 2017, up 3.7% ($167 billion) from $4,514 billion last year.

The 2017 Valuation Report is available here.

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