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Social exclusion monitor

More than one million Australians experience deep social exclusion

Social exclusion occurs when someone experiences multiple, overlapping problems, such as unemployment, poor health and inadequate education, which stop them fully participating in society. Tackling social exclusion helps make Australia a better place to live for everyone.

The social exclusion monitor is a new approach to measuring social exclusion in Australia. Developed by the Brotherhood of St Laurence and the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research (MIAESR), it uses the annual Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey of 13,000 people.

The monitor finds that more than one million Australians deal with deep social exclusion. This means that they experience at least four different sorts of disadvantage in their lives, such as being on a low income, having little work experience, not being involved in community clubs or associations and not being socially active.

You can use the monitor to better understand who is missing out in Australia and to gauge the effectiveness of government social policy.

Click on the photos to find out how different groups of people experience social exclusion.

Smiling woman with a pink flower in her hair, standing in a light room with colourful artwork on the wall. An elderly man is sitting in a chair in the backgroundOlder man with a thoughtful expression, wearing spectacles, a navy beanie, a blue T-shirt and an olive-coloured jacketWoman with brown and gold braided hair tied back sharing a laugh with her pre-school-aged daughter who also has dark, braided hair, bookcase full of books in the backgroundMiddle-aged woman in pink track top and glasses smiling with yellow texta in her handA middle-aged man standing with a walking stick behind his daughter sitting on a red motorised scooter in his lounge room, a television is in the foreground and the open front door is in the backgroundYoung man in jeans, a blue and white striped shirt and black beanie standing outside Fitzroy LibraryProgress Loans participant, Barbara, standing at her fridge with the freezer door open and the freezer full of foodYoung, smiling woman with short,dark, curly hair, wearing a black, grey and white leopard-print top, sitting in an ornate timber dining chair at a table with a mauve table cloth

Logo with blue jagged line motif and the text Melbourne Institute, The University of Melbourne alongside it

Logo with circle motif divided into four quarters, three grey and the top one orange, with a zig-zag top. The text Brotherhood of St Laurence, Working for an Australia free of poverty alongside

If you would like to be notified about updates to the social exclusion monitor, please subscribe to Brotherhood Update, the regular enewsletter from our Research and Policy Centre. 

 

 

Margaret's and David's lives changed when a stroke left David disabled. Their social circle contracted and getting out became harder. 

Read their story

 
Social exclusion monitor bulletin

Read about the research findings in the project bulletin:

Social exclusion monitor bulletin September 2011 (PDF file, 156 KB)

What's new

Michael Horn's essay, 'Measuring social exclusion: evidence for a new social policy agenda' appears in Staying power, the 11th State of the Family report , published by  Anglicare Australia in 2011.

Data from the social exclusion monitor regarding young people was reported in The Age 21 October 2011, Tough path from dropout to high school grad
and in the same day's editorial.
 

 

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