Over Half Of SA Children Living In “Disadvantage”, New Report Reveals

An alarming official report card has revealed over half of South Australian children live in disadvantaged socio-economic circumstances.

The report, How are they faring? South Australia’s 2022 Report Card for children and young people, showed 53.6 per cent of people under 18 years old live in disadvantaged socio-economic circumstances – above the 38.9 per cent national average.

Sixteen measures of South Australian children have also gone backwards.

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Commissioner for Children and one of the report’s authors, Helen Connolly, told the Advertiser the results are the outcome of poor funding “over many years”.

“When we go backwards on a measure, what we are seeing is the impact of the lack of investment over many years in the social and physical wellbeing infrastructure needed for children to thrive,’’ Ms Connolly said.

“Issues like poverty, disability, family breakdown, violence, or racism, point to a lack of action in our human services, child protection and health systems to provide children with what they need.

“We must do more to address the growing inequality of outcomes between those children who have and those who have not.”

Key report findings

104,000 (26 per cent) of children lived in the most disadvantaged households that earn less than $25,000 per year. This was up from 25.2 per cent in 2021 and more than the national average of 19.3 per cent.

43,000 (10.8 per cent) of children were living in the least disadvantaged socio-economic circumstances, up from 10.5 per cent in 2021 and compared to 21.1 per cent nationally.

“Disadvantaged” is measured by a scoring households on income, employment, education levels, work skill level, access to internet, home rental amounts, single parent families, car ownership, and English language skills.

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