Feeling of safety

Living peacefully and feeling safe

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Metric

Proportion of people who felt safe or very safe walking alone during the day and night

Why this matters

Wellbeing is impacted by safety at home, online, at work, in the community and in the world. People who feel their safety is at risk may experience increased levels of stress, anxiety and vulnerability.

A general measure which provides a sense of how safe people feel is whether they are comfortable to walk alone.

Progress

Data from the National Survey of Community Satisfaction with Policing, as reported in the Productivity Commission Report on Government Services, shows that in 2022-23:

  • 91.0% of people aged 18 years and over felt safe to walk alone in their neighbourhood during the day, similar to 2021-22 (91.5%)
  • 53.7% felt safe to walk alone in their neighbourhood at night, similar to 2021-22 (53.8%).

Feeling safe walking alone in the neighbourhood at night improved over the last decade from 49.8% in 2012‑13 to 53.7% in 2022‑23.

  1. Refers to the number of persons aged 18 years and over who felt safe walking in their local area, expressed as a percentage of all persons aged 18 years and over. Data from before October 2015 referred to persons aged 15 years and over.

Note: 2012-13 data from Productivity Commission Report on Government Services 2023: Table 6A.19

Data Source
Productivity Commission Report on Government Services 2024: Table 6A.20

Differences across groups

Data from the ABS Personal Safety Survey shows that in 2021-22, of those who walked alone in their local area after dark, men are more likely to feel safe than women (94% compared to 85%).

Women were more likely to avoid walking alone in their local area at night. In 2021-22, 63% of women and 31% of men did not walk alone in their local area after dark. 

For people who did not walk alone in their local area after dark:

  • 37% of women avoided it because they felt unsafe, down from 42% in 2016
  • 9% of men avoided it because they felt unsafe, down from 13% in 2016.

Disaggregation

Further information about how different groups experience feelings of safety walking alone in their neighbourhood is available in the ABS Personal Safety Survey summary results, and General Feelings of Safety.

Disaggregation available includes:

  • Sex
  • Age group 
  • Sexual orientation 
  • Disability status 
  • Labour force status 
  • Education: Level of highest non-school qualification 
  • Cultural and language diversity: Country of birth 
  • Remoteness 
  • Capital city/balance of state
  • Socioeconomic status: Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage.

Note: This data is sourced from the ABS Personal Safety Survey and is different to the source supporting the metric above.