Inequality in Australia 2024: Who is affected and how?

Abstract

Our overview report on Inequality in Australia revealed large and persistent gaps in incomes and wealth between the lowest and highest rungs of the distribution:

• In 2019-20, the highest 10% of households ranked by income had an average $5,248 per week after tax, over two and a half times that of the middle 20% ($1,989) and six times that of the lowest 20% ($794).
• Wealth is divided much more unequally than income. In 2022-23 the highest 10% of households ranked by wealth (those with over $2.5 million) held 44% of all wealth, an average of $5.2 million each. This is three times the wealth of the next 30% with $1.5 million, 15 times that of the lowest 60% with $343,000 and 126 times that of the lowest 20% (with $41,000).

In 2023, there were 159 billionaires in Australia with average wealth of $3.2 billion each. Their total wealth was $503 billion – so that 3.2% of all household wealth was held by 0.0007% of all adults.

In this report, we dig deeper into the latest available data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (for 2019-20, adjusting forward to 2022-23 for wealth) to identify who stands where on the income and wealth ladders and the main causes of income and wealth inequality.

This report has a special focus on individual earnings inequality and on inequalities of wealth by age.