Regional Divide - A study of Incomes In Regional Australia

Conference paper on income distribution by state, region, and local government area, developed by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM).

By Rachael Lloyd, Ann Harding, and Otto Hellwing, National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, University of Canberra.

Paper presented at the 29th Conference of Economist, Gold Coast, Australia, 3-6 July 2000.

The economic and social circumstances of Australians vary significantly by region. This paper uses regional modelling techniques to examine the income distribution of households in regional between 1991 and 1996. It considers changes at state, regional and local government areas.

While acknowledging the impartance of other quality of life indicators, the focus of the Report is income levels, distributions and changes over time.

The definitions used in the paper are:

• Capital cities - states and territory capital cities and surrounding areas
• Major urban areas - major non capital cities with populations of more than 100,000
• Regional towns - Towns and cities with populations of 1000 to 99,999
• Rural towns - Towns with populations of 200 to 999
• Rural areas - other rural areas.

The data sources for the information are Australian Bureau of Statistics data and census data.

The Paper suggests that there is a growing gap between incomes of those Australians living in the capital cities and those living in the res of Australia, however experiences of growth and decline arr not uniform with different experiences in different states, regions and local government areas. Middle income Australia is also declining the proportion of those on high incomes and low incomes are growing.

Some other findings of the reports include:

• On average living in the cities enjoy much higher gross incomes that people living elsewhere do. For example, the 1996, households in capital cities $44785, which was 30% more than households in regional towns, 20% more that households in major urban areas and 24% more than those in rural areas.
• The incomes of metropolitan residents increased at about double the rate of those living in major urban areas, regional and rural towns in the 5 year period 1991 to 1996.
• People living in rural areas enjoyed the strongest income growth rates but the percentage of households in low incomes was highest in these areas and
• The proportion of high income households grew most rapidly in capital cities

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