Households are suffering the worst decline in living standards since the 1950s, with the fall in real disposable income eclipsing those of the past four major recessions including the 1970s inflation crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Source: The Australian.
Analysis of official Government statistics shows the current cost-of-living crisis has hit households twice as hard as the 1990-91 and 1982-83 recessions and significantly more sharply than any period dating back to 1959.
It also reveals living standards in Australia during the current inflation crisis have fallen more than in any other OECD country, with the hit to households now worse than almost all comparable developed nations.
The statistics paint a grim picture for the Albanese Government, which was elected on the promise of lowering the cost of living, as it prepares to recontest an election with household pain to continue and the prospect of interest rate cuts being put back until the second half of next year.
Coalition analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics data since 1959 shows there has never been a fall in living standards as dramatic as that of the past two years. This analysis has been confirmed by independent economists.
Since the March quarter in 2022, two months before the election of the Albanese Government, living standards have fallen 8.7 per cent.
Economist Chris Richardson said the decline in living standards was without precedent since the index was first measured and warned of the political consequences.
“What you’re seeing with approval ratings and election outcomes with leaders around the world is that those holding the baby at the moment when inflation rips through living standards have paid the price,” Mr Richardson said.
“The challenge for Australia is that the impact on our living standards has been far greater than anywhere else. There is no argument that the fall (since 2022) is bigger than anything we have seen since 1959.”
FULL STORY‘
Productivity sick as a dog’: plummeting living standards in worse fall since 1959 (By Simon Benson, The Australian)
