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 OZschwitz: The older and wiser are now also wealthier

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RR Phantom

RR Phantom

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OZschwitz: The older and wiser are now also wealthier Vide
PostSubject: OZschwitz: The older and wiser are now also wealthier   OZschwitz: The older and wiser are now also wealthier Icon_minitimeSun Aug 17, 2008 7:14 pm

THE richest 10 per cent of Australian households are now older, better-educated and more likely to be white-collar, a new study shows.

While the research concludes that the Howard government eased the tax burden on all Australians in the decade to 2005-06, the richest households benefited more than others.

The average disposable income of the top 10 per cent of Australian households grew by 45.5 per cent in the decade to $1518.30 a week.

This compares with the Australian average, which grew by 35.9 per cent to $644.60 a week, according to the paper A Growing Gap? Trends In Economic Wellbeing At The Top Of The Spectrum In Australia by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling at the University of Canberra, to be released on August 29 at a conference in Slovenia.

NSW has the highest percentage of households in the top income bracket, 37.2 per cent, but this has fallen by 2.4 per cent in the decade. Only Victoria and Queensland have increased their percentage of high-income households, to 23.4 per cent and 17.6 per cent respectively.

The top group's average tax burden fell in the decade, from 29.4 per cent to 25.8 per cent of their income, compared with the overall Australian average which fell from 19.6 per cent to 18.3 per cent, the study found.

In general, the researchers found that there was a shift in the tax burden away from the rich and towards other taxpayers and that the tax system became slightly less redistributive.

"The largest winners during the Howard era were, however, age pensioners with some private resources of their own," the authors wrote. "This was due to the generous increases in the Senior Australian Tax Offset, as well as to the pension indexation arrangements …"

There was a rise in the number of households with residents who were more than 60 years old in the richest bracket, from 8.1 per cent to 12.2 per cent.

The proportion of rich, childless households declined by 2.3 per cent but still made up 75 per cent of all of these households in the richest bracket. This is at odds with the national average, which saw childless households grow to be 66.2 per cent of all households.

The rich have also seen a growth in households with two and three children living at home. The authors note "this suggests that there [are] now more baby-boomer parents in the top decile whose children are refusing to leave the family nest while they undertake full-time studies (and are thus still counted as 'dependent children')".

White-collar workers now make up almost three-quarters of the richest households. The researchers also found that those in the richest households were more likely to have university degrees (up 17.5 per cent) and more likely to be employees (up 15.2 per cent). Employees now made up 87.7 per cent of the top-income decile compared with employers, who made up 3.6 per cent.

The richest households were less likely to own their home and more likely to be paying off a mortgage. "[While] 34.3 per cent of all Australian households own their home outright, only 27.9 per cent of top decile households do so," the authors state.

They found there was a large jump in investment income for rich households during the decade, with almost 10 per cent of their money from this source.

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