Selectivity and Targeting in Income Support: The Australian Experience.

The Australian income support system is often characterised as one of the most selective in the Western industrialised world. This paper examines the sense in which the Australian system is selective, and discusses the distinction between selectivity and targeting in income support pro-visions. Developments in social security outlays and recipient numbers over the last two decades are compared with those occurring since 1983, in order that the nature and impact of recent policies introduced to increase targeting can be identified. The analysis indicates that increases in recipient numbers have been the dominant factor underlying the past growth in social security expenditure. The distinction between selectivity and targeting of income support provisions is then explained with reference to the concepts of eligibility and entitlement. A framework is developed to illustrate how recent policies have restrained the growth in social security recipient numbers by policies which have increased income support targeting. These moves have not always produced a consistently more selective system of income support, an issue which is explored with the use of an index of the degree of selectivity of social security expenditures developed specifically for this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]