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:
- be over 16 and be under Age Pension age (currently 62 for women and 65 for men); 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 2003, there were 673,334 people receiving DSP. Almost two thirds of these customers were aged 45 years or over; 61.3% were male; 72.7% were born in Australia; only 9.4% had income from employment though 16.4% were on reduced rates due to their or their partner's income or assets; and, on average, they had been in continuous receipt of DSP for 7.3 years. The three main medical conditions are musculo-skeletal or connective tissue conditions, representing 33.7% of the total DSP population, psychological/psychiatric conditions, representing 24.7%, and intellectual/learning difficulties, representing 10.5%.
Since 1982 the DSP customer population has been steadily increasing, with the greatest growth, of 13.3%, occurring in 1992 following the introduction of the Disability Reform Package (DSP replaced the Invalid Pension and Sheltered Employment Allowance in November 1991). Between 1996 and 2001 the growth rate has reduced gradually from 7.5% to 3.6%. It increased to 5.6% in 2002 before dropping to 2.2% in 2003, with the introduction of the AWT Better Assessment and Early Intervention initiative. The proportion of females on DSP has increased each year since 1989 and now represents 38.7% of the total DSP population.
Almost 72,000 claims for DSP were granted in the 2002-03 financial year and just over 41,000 claims rejected (36.6% of total claims processed). Lack of medical eligibility was the main reason for rejecting a claim for DSP (40.2%).
Over half of people coming onto Disability Support Pension are coming from other income support payments with the main payments being Newstart or Youth Allowance (35.3%), Parenting Payments (5.6%) and Sickness Allowance (1.7%). 45.4% were not previously in receipt of another Centrelink payment.