Who is this Payment for?
Disability Support Pension (DSP) is paid to people who are unable to work for at least 15 hours per week, or be re-skilled for such work, within two years because of their 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 63.5 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 of at least 15 hours a week, 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 2008, the DSP population was 732 367, an increase of 2.6 per cent over the June 2007 population of 714 156.
Of the total DSP population 56.5 per cent were male and 43.5 per cent female. The proportion of male recipient numbers has steadily slowed in growth since
June 2003; 74 per cent of DSP recipients were born in Australia; and, average duration on an income support payment is 11.3 years for a Disability Support Pension recipient.
The DSP population is primarily represented by four main medical categories. Musculo-skeletal and connective tissue conditions 31.9 per cent, Psychological/Psychiatric conditions 27.3 per cent, Intellectual/Learning difficulties, 11.2 per cent and Circulatory systems 5.0 per cent.
Since 1982 the DSP population has been steadily increasing, with the highest growth, of 13.3 per cent, 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 from 7.5 per cent to 3.6 per cent. It increased to 5.6 per cent in 2002, dropped to 2.2 per cent in 2003 (with the introduction of the AWT Better Assessment and Early Intervention initiative) increased again in 2004 by 3.5 per cent and dropped to 1.4 per cent in 2005. The declining growth since 2005 was consistent with the introduction of Welfare to Work changes. The growth from June 2006 to June 2007 at 0.3 per cent was the lowest since 1982. The subsequent increase in 2007-08 of 2.6 per cent is the highest in four years.
There were 116 530 claims for DSP in 2007-08, with 74 679 grants (64 per cent) and 41 851 rejections (36 per cent). The main rejection reason was for a person having less than 20 points impairment which accounted for 43 per cent of total rejections.
Comparing June 2007 to June 2008, over half of the new DSP recipients came from other income support payments (32.8 per cent from Newstart, 6.5 per cent from Parenting Payments, 2.5 per cent from Youth Allowance and 1.7 per cent from Sickness Allowance), while 45.9 per cent had not been in receipt of an income support payment prior to claiming DSP.
Of the people who were on DSP at June 2007, and had left the payment by June 2008, 48.4 per cent went to Age Pension, 26.9 per cent were no longer on income support payments, and also includes deceased recipients.