Disability Support Pension - Overview
Who is this Payment for?
Centrelink 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 16 or over 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 2005, there were 706,782 people receiving DSP, an increase of 1.4% (10,040) over June 2004. Two thirds of the total population were aged 45 years or over; 59.4% were male; 73.3% were born in Australia; and, on average, they had been in receipt of an income support payment for 9.7 years. The three main medical conditions were musculo-skeletal and connective tissue conditions, representing 33.9% of the total DSP population, psychological/psychiatric conditions, representing 26.2%, and intellectual/learning difficulties, representing 11.0%.
The number of male DSP recipients increased by only 1,244 from June 2004 to June 2005. This small increase is due to a combination of:
- a decrease of 7.9% in (male) claims processed for DSP,
- an increase in the proportion of claims being rejected; and
- more cancellations of DSP payments.
There were no significant changes in the demographics of males during the 2004/05 financial year.
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%. In 2005 it increased by 1.4%, the lowest increase for over 20 years. The proportion of females on DSP has increased each year since 1989 and now represents 40.6% of the total DSP population.
Over 69,800 claims for DSP were granted in the 2004-05 financial year and just over 42,000 claims rejected (37.7% of total claims processed). Not being sufficiently impaired was the main reason for rejecting a claim for DSP (37.8%).
Of people receiving DSP in June 2005 who were not receiving DSP 12 months earlier, over half came from other income support payments (35.3% from Newstart or Youth Allowance, 6.3% from Parenting Payments and 1.8% from Sickness Allowance), while 45.3% had not been in receipt of an income support payment.
The number of people who were on DSP at June 2004 but left payment by June 2005 increased by 21.0% over the previous 12 month period. The largest group were those transferring to the Age Pension (55.6%).