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AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF HEALTH AND WELFARE (AIHW)

NAME OF COLLECTION

Australian Government Housing Data Set


OVERVIEW

The Australian Government Housing Data Set (HDS) is held by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) and is provided under the 2003 National Housing Data Agreement which is a sub-agreement under the 2003 Commonwealth State Housing Agreement.

The HDS is drawn from a source dataset used by the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) to monitor the Rent Assistance program. The source dataset combines information from numerous Centrelink files to create records at an income unit level, rather than a person or household level. For this purpose an income unit consists of a person, the person’s partner and any children for whom the couple may receive family payments through Centrelink. Single social security recipients living together in the same household are regarded as separate income units.

The HDS is a derived confidential unit record file which provides point in time data for income units in receipt of Centrelink payments. It includes protected information collected under social security and family assistance law about the type of housing, amount of weekly income, Centrelink payment type and other characteristics of income units at that time.


SCOPE

The 2000 - 2009 data include all income units receiving Centrelink social security income support payments and families receiving more than the base rate of Family Tax Benefit Part A (FTB Part A). It does not include income units who receive only the base rate of FTB Part A.

From 2010 the data also includes income units receiving the base rate of FTB Part A.


DATA DETAIL

Demographic data items:

• Country of birth (of reference person and partner)
• Sex
• Indigenous indicator
• Relationship qualifier
• Age of reference person (and partner)
• Number of children under 13 years, number of children 13 to 15 years, number of children over 15 years
• Postcode
• Statistical Local Area

• Home ownership code
• Rent type code
• Rent verification code
• Accommodation type code
• Weekly rent payment
• Rental stress

• Asset value
• Primary payment amount of reference person (and partner)
• Add-ons amount
• Family payment amount
• Carer amount
• Total private income
• Earned income
• Weekly Rent Assistance amount (of reference person and partner)
• Government sub-tenant code
• Centrepay indicator
• Duration on payment

• Student status (and partner)
• Youth allowance details
• Disability code
• Primary payment type of reference person (and partner)

• Department of Families, Family, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs Annual Reports under 'About FaHCSIA / Key corporate publications'
• The "Report on Government Services 2007" on the Productivity Commission website
• The "Commonwealth Rent Assistance, June 2002: A profile of recipients" bulletin on the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare website