Are immigrants overrepresented in the Australian Social Security System?

Abstract

This article discusses the statistics commonly used for judging whether immigrants are more or less likely than those born in Australia to receive social security payments. Much previous discussion of this issue has not taken into account the eligibility conditions applying to different payments, and the effects of differences between the age distributions of different birthplace groups. Previous studies have overestimated the level of social security receipt for most overseas-born birthplace groups and underestimated the level of receipt for those born in Australia. The article presents estimates of social security receipt in 1989, correcting for these factors. © 1991 Springer Science+Business Media.