Disability Support Pension - Overview
Who is this Payment for?
Disability Support Pension (DSP) is paid to people who are unable to work for at least 30 hours per week, or be re-skilled for such work, for more than two years because of a disability. DSP is intended to ensure that people with disabilities have adequate levels of income and maximum opportunities to participate in society.
Eligibility Requirements
To qualify for DSP a person must:
- have turned 16; and
- be permanently blind; or
- have a physical, intellectual or psychiatric impairment (assessed at 20 points or more under the Impairment Tables); and be unable to do any work, or be re-skilled for any work, for a period of at least two years; and
- have become unable to work while in Australia, or have 10 years qualifying Australian residence.
Trends
As at June 2001, there were 623,926 people in receipt of DSP. Two thirds of these customers were aged over 45 years; 63% were male; 77% were born in Australia; only 9% had income from employment though 17% were on reduced rates due to their or their partner's income or assets; and they had an average duration of 7 years in receipt of DSP. The three largest medical conditions are musculo-skeletal or connective tissue conditions, representing 32% of the total DSP population, psychological/psychiatric conditions, representing 23%, and intellectual/learning disabilities, representing 10%.
Since 1977 the DSP customer population has been steadily increasing, with the greatest growth, of 13%, occurring in the 1991-92 financial year following the introduction of the Disability Reform Package. This growth has slowed in recent years to a rate of around 4% each year and the current trend suggests it will fall to a rate of around 3% per year up until at least 2005-06.
There were around over 77,000 new DSP customers in the 2000-01 financial year with 37% of these coming directly from Newstart or Youth Allowance, 6% from Parenting Payments and 2% from Sickness Allowance. 45% were not previously in receipt of another Centrelink payment.
The proportion of females is also increasing and females now represent 37% of the total DSP population.
This report was prepared by the Disability Payments and Services Section, Office of Disability Branch.