Breaking Down Barriers Community Profiles

Poverty is a complex matter with a wide range of social, health and economic factors that can lead people into, or out of, poverty. Changing a person’s circumstances doesn’t only rely on important decisions made by the individual, but also on available opportunities for positive change and on community dynamics.

The success of programs and policies to support individuals and families in poverty is determined by a well-rounded understanding of the opportunities and challenges faced by communities. Many national priorities, including poverty, require an understanding of socio-economic issues at community level.

This Research Insight/Rapid Analysis introduces Breaking Down Barriers Community Profiles – an interactive web-based data visualisation tool to track factors associated with economic poverty among Australian communities.

While studies show Australia’s poverty rate is 18 percent across all households, and is around 20 percent for single parent households, poverty rates range from near zero to more than 40 percent of all households at a community level. This disparity illustrates the importance of capturing statistics at individual community levels, while also understanding how the composition of those communities influences their poverty rates.

To eliminate poverty, more data are needed to support better decision-making. Better access to richer datasets is helping researchers to better target and evaluate programs. Breaking Down Barriers Community Profiles showcases key insights and provides a community-level view of curated data for the public, services providers, analysts, policy makers and policy shapers.

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AUTHORS
Dr Maxim Ananyev
Dr Ujjwal KC
Professor A. Abigail Payne
Dr Rajeev Samarage