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 62½ 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 2004, there were 696,742 people receiving DSP. Almost two thirds of these customers were aged 45 years or over; 60.1% were male; 72.9% were born in Australia; and, on average, they had been in receipt of an income suuport payment for 7.9 years. The three main medical conditions were musculo-skeletal or connective tissue conditions, representing 34.0% of the total DSP population, psychological/psychiatric conditions, representing 25.4%, and intellectual/learning difficulties, representing 10.7%.
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 reduced gradually from 7.5% to 3.6%. It increased to 5.6% in 2002, dropped to 2.2% in 2003 (with the introduction of the AWT Better Assessment and Early Intervention initiative) and increased again in 2004 to 3.5%. The proportion of females on DSP has increased each year since 1989 and now represents 39.9% of the total DSP population.
Over 74,000 claims for DSP were granted in the 2003-04 financial year and just over 43,000 claims rejected (36.7% of total claims processed). Lack of medical eligibility was the main reason for rejecting a claim for DSP (37.8%).
Of people coming onto DSP in the 12 month period prior to June 2004, over half came from other income support payments (32.3% from Newstart or Youth Allowance, 5.7% from Parenting Payments and 1.8% from Sickness Allowance), while 45.4% had not been in receipt of an income support payment.