Every year, thousands of Australians answer a series of questions as part of the long-running Hilda survey.
This questionnaire – more expansively known as the household, income and labour dynamics in Australia survey – has been tracking the same households since 2001.
As families have expanded over the two decades, it has grown to include about 16,000 people a year in 9,000 households, offering a unique longitudinal study of Australian life in the 21st century.
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The questions cover a broad range of topics, from health and wellbeing, to attitudes and values, to employment and income.
This week, the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, which manages the survey, released its annual statistical report.
Here are five things we learned.
Covid and household incomes
The report shows how a middle-income household earned more than $100,000 a year after tax for the first time in 2021, as the jobs market boomed and generous government Covid payments boosted household budgets.
But soaring prices and higher average tax rates sent median household disposable incomes backwards between 2021 and 2023 – although they remained higher than before the crisis.
The report also confirms how our real (or accounting for higher prices) incomes stagnated at about $95,000 through much of the 2010s – a period marked by low growth and low inflation after a decade of strong growth in household incomes in the 2000s.
More stressed
Despite incomes staying relatively high in 2023, there was plenty of evidence that many Australians were increasingly struggling to deal with the high cost of living, not least rising rents and the prices of other necessities.
One in eight people reported two or more indicators of financial stress in 2023 – the second-highest rate in nearly 20 years.
Stress indicators include not being able to pay utilities or mortgage or rent on time, skipping meals, being unable to heat the home, or having asked for financial help from friends, family or welfare organisations.
Hardest hit were single-parent households, where nearly one in three reported two or more financial indicators of stress in 2023, according to the Hilda survey.
That was the height of the cost of living pressures, so subsequent surveys will hopefully show less stressed households in 2024 and beyond.
We’re paying more for childcare
The average family is spending $171 a week on childcare, or nearly $100 more than two decades ago – and that’s after factoring in inflation.
Over a shorter timeframe, the picture looks more benign: we’re not spending more than a decade ago.
To better measure the financial burden of childcare, the Hilda survey shows families dedicated a median 6.3% of disposable household income to childcare in the latest figures, versus 4.5% in the early 2000s – a 40% increase.
The report also shows that between 2005 and 2023, families increased their weekly use of paid care for the non-school age children by 7.7 hours, or about an extra day a week, from 18.5 hours to 26.2 hours.
Our reliance on grandparents for child-minding duties increased only slightly over the same period, from 10.5 hours a week, to 11.8 hours.
We want fewer children
Australia’s total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman will have in her lifetime, dropped to a record low of 1.5 in 2023 – down from 2.02 in 2008.
(A fertility rate of 2.1 is generally quoted as the number required to keep a population stable through natural growth.)
And there’s little evidence in the Hilda survey that fertility is about to pick back up.
Women on average said they wanted 2.35 kids in 2005, but by 2023 that number had dropped to 2.09.
Over the same timeframe, men’s “desired” number of children dropped from 2.22, to 1.99 – the first time it has reached below 2.
Inga Lass, a senior research fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, said two children has remained the most popular number of children over the past 20 years (even if statistically we are having fewer on average).
“But we’ve seen an increase in the numbers of people who said they wanted one child, or none at all,” Lass said.
So why do we want fewer kids?
“Potential parents are growing more concerned about their financial security and the costs of raising a child, and that pragmatism is outweighing the emotional side of the decision,” Lass said.
We’re retiring older
In 2003, 70% of women and 49% of men aged 60-64 were retired.
But by 2023, these figures had dropped to 40% and 27%, respectively, the survey showed.
Kyle Peyton, a co-author of the statistical report, said the shifts likely reflected a mix of economic and policy decisions.
“Back in 2003, the age pension eligibility was 62.5 years of age for women and 65 for men. By 2023, that had been increased to 67. That shift alone means many older Australians have needed to stay in the workforce longer, especially those who can’t afford to retire before becoming eligible for the pension,” Peyton said.
“At the same time, improvements in health at older ages mean that more people are physically able to keep working later in life.”
