Anti-Poverty Week makes the case for the need to measure Poverty and Child Wellbeing in our submission to Treasury on Measuring What Matters – to develop a National Framework for a Wellbeing Budget.
We cannot measure wellbeing without measuring poverty. Yet Australia does not have a definition of poverty accepted by the Federal Government. Until we agree on this, it is hard to make progress on measuring our nation and children’s wellbeing. It also makes it difficult for Australia to meet our commitments to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and UN Global Goals (Sustainable Development Goals).
We urge the Federal Government to adopt the following definition of poverty: relative income poverty as having a household income below 50% of median income; to measure and track progress over time as part of a new Australian Wellbeing Framework.
Read our full submission