Explaining the Growth in the Number of Recipients of the Disability Support Pension in Australia
Abstract
This article shows that one‐third of the growth in the Disability Support Pension (DSP) recipiency rate over the last 30 years can be explained by population ageing and increases in the retirement age for women. A wide range of factors is likely to have contributed to the remaining growth, but we argue that the growing attractiveness of DSP compared to other income‐support payments has played an important role. Looking forward, population growth and planned increases in the retirement age will both put upward pressure on the DSP roll, which, without major reform, could plausibly hit 1 million recipients within 10 years.
1 Introduction
The continued growth in the number of recipients of Disability Support Pension (DSP) is a major concern for policymakers and public commentators alike. In part, this reflects the implications for the Federal budget of having over 800,000 individuals in receipt of DSP—with DSP payments alone totalling $14.9 billion in 2012–2013 (Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs 2013b)—at a time when the budget deficit, particularly in the light of the launch of DisabilityCare Australia, is very high on the policy agenda. There is also a widely held concern that DSP leads to welfare dependency—once on DSP, recipients tend to stay on DSP until they reach Age Pension age or die—and may end up exacerbating poverty among some people with disabilities rather than alleviating it.
The DSP roll has been growing consistently for over 40 years now. Figure 1 shows growth over the 30‐year period between 1982 and 2011, in total and separately for men and women. We see that growth in the total roll was steady between 1982 and 1991, accelerated for the period 1991–2002, then levelled off in the early–mid‐2000s before accelerating again from 2008. The rolls for men and women followed similar growth paths over the period until the early 2000s, when the number of male DSP recipients actually fell slightly (although growth has subsequently resumed), whereas the number of female DSP recipients continued to grow, with growth accelerating in the last few years. The result is a partial closing of the gap between the number of male and female recipients.

This article looks more closely at the growth in the DSP roll over this 30‐year period and discusses some of the factors that are commonly put forward as possible drivers of the growth. We present a simple descriptive analysis of likely ballpark magnitudes for the contribution of some of these possible drivers—including population growth, population ageing and the increase in the age at which women become eligible for the Age Pension—to overall growth in the DSP roll. In doing so, we build on an earlier study of Australian DSP growth by Lixin Cai and Bob Gregory (Cai and Gregory 2003), on analysis contained in an Appendix to the Productivity Commission's report on disability care and support (Productivity Commission 2011) and on a recent study of US Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) growth by Daly, Lucking and Schwabish (2013). We then discuss the likely role of labour market changes, trends in the relative attractiveness of DSP and changes to the welfare system as drivers of DSP growth, again broadly following these earlier studies. We conclude by looking forward to what we might expect in terms of DSP growth over the next 10 years.
2 Population Growth, Population Ageing and Increases in Women's Retirement Age
Our starting point, and part of the reason for the observed growth in DSP rolls, is simply that the Australian population has grown over the last 30 years. In particular, the working‐aged population—here defined as 16–64 years for both men and women—has grown from just under 10 million to just under 15 million. Even if recipiency rates had remained unchanged, this increase in population would have driven growth in the number of DSP recipients. We can get a ballpark magnitude for this effect by holding recipiency rates constant at their 1982 level and applying them to the growing population through to 2011. This shows that population growth alone probably accounts for around 117,000 of the 600,000 additional recipients that have been added to the DSP roll since 1982.
Figure 2 shows the growth in the DSP roll net of the impact of population growth by reporting the number of recipients as a proportion of the relevant working‐aged population, both overall and separately by gender.1Expressing DSP recipiency as a proportion of the relevant population also allows us to more readily compare Australia's disability roll with those of other Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries. Australia finds itself close to the OECD average in this respect, although its relative position has deteriorated from having the 14th highest (out of the 21 pre‐1990 OECD countries minus Greece, Turkey and Iceland) proportion of the working‐aged population on disability benefits in the mid‐1990s to having the 10th highest by 2010. Even after accounting for population growth, we still see rapid growth in the DSP roll, particularly over the period from 1991 to 2002. But note the contrast between Figures 1 and 2 in growth paths over the 2000s, particularly in the extent of the decline in recipiency among men. The analysis that follows focuses on the number of DSP recipients expressed as a proportion of the working‐aged population.

Sources: Authors' calculations are based on Department of Social Security (1993), Department of Family and Community Services (2001, 2003), Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (2006), Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (2012) and ABS (2013).
Recognising that disability incidence increases with age, we can examine the role of changes in the age structure of the population as a possible driver of DSP growth. We do so by holding the 1982 age structure of the working‐aged male and female populations constant and generating the DSP rolls that would have resulted from the changes in age‐specific recipiency rates observed over our period, given the constant population structure. We then subtract this counterfactual from the observed growth to obtain an estimate of the impact of population ageing on DSP growth.
Our analysis suggests that around 17 per cent of the increase in the proportion of the working‐aged population (20 per cent for men and 15 per cent for women) over the period 1982–2011 is likely to have been driven by population ageing within the 16–64 years age range. This is in line with the Productivity Commission (2011), although our interpretation differs slightly in that we think this is an important contributor to overall growth. It is also, coincidentally, in line with the estimates of Daly, Lucking and Schwabish (2013) for the United States. Note that, consistent with the findings of Cai and Gregory (2003), none of this ageing impact occurred during the period from 1982 to 1991; rather, it is over the period since 1991 where population ageing drove increased DSP rolls.
Next, consider increases in women's retirement age. Up until the end of 1995, women were eligible for the Age Pension from the age of 60 years old. Since 1 January 1996, however, this minimum age of eligibility has been increased in 6‐monthly steps every 2 years. The final step is due in January 2014, when women, like men, will only be eligible for the Age Pension from the age of 65 years old. At each step, there is a clear increase in the number of female DSP recipients aged 60–64 years, from fewer than 1,000 in 1995 to almost 80,000 in 2011. Both the Productivity Commission (2011) and Cai and Gregory (2003) mention this reform but without quantifying its likely impact. Daly, Lucking and Schwabish (2013), however, do attempt to quantify the impact on SSDI rolls of the raising of the pension age in the United States.
Following Daly, Lucking and Schwabish (2013), we assume that all additional 60–64‐year‐old female DSP recipients after 1 January 1996 (that is, 79,000 by 2011) joined the roll because of the increase in the Age Pension age. This corresponds to 1.06 percentage points of the overall 3.5 percentage point increase in the proportion of the female working‐aged population receiving DSP over the period 1982–2011, or just over 30 per cent. So, this has been a major factor in the growth of the female DSP roll, particularly over the period from 2002 to 2011, where it accounts for almost 70 per cent of the increase in the female recipiency rate.
Both population ageing and the increase in women's retirement age have therefore played a non‐trivial role in driving DSP growth over the last 30 years, each explaining around 17 per cent of the observed growth. Unsurprisingly, because the retirement age has not increased for men, more of the growth in the women's DSP roll can be explained than is the case for men (45 per cent as opposed to 20 per cent). Nevertheless, for both genders, a large proportion of the overall growth in recipiency rates—which we call the ‘residual’ following Daly, Lucking and Schwabish (2013)—remains unexplained by the analysis so far.
Figure 3 summarises the effects of ageing and increases in the female retirement age by plotting the time path of the overall DSP recipiency rate with and without the estimated impacts of each of these factors. Note that the series track each other closely until the mid‐1990s, from which point they begin to diverge.

Source: Authors' calculations.
3 What Drives the Residual?
Many of the factors identified by the Australian and international literature as potentially important drivers of disability roll growth are to be found in our ‘residual’, including labour market changes, the characteristics of DSP itself in terms of eligibility criteria and relative ‘generosity’ of payments and the characteristics of other substitute or complementary benefit payments (see, for example, Bound and Burkhauser 1999; Cai and Gregory 2003; Burkhauser and Daly 2011; McVicar 2011; Productivity Commission 2011). Here, we follow Cai and Gregory (2003) and Productivity Commission (2011), updating the discussion and adding detail where necessary, by taking a brief look at some of these factors and discussing their likely impacts on the DSP roll. In some cases, we draw on data from ABS's Disability, Ageing and Carers Surveys over the period from 1993 to 2009; bear in mind that inferences for this period may not necessarily hold for the period 1982–1993 or 2009–2011.
A consistent finding of the US literature on disability rolls is that little of the growth in disability benefit rolls over time can be explained by increases in disability prevalence (for example, Bound and Burkhauser 1999). The same appears to be the case for Australia. Given that we have already accounted for population ageing, Figure 4 shows disability prevalence within age groups, drawing on data from the ABS's Disability, Ageing and Carers Survey for the period 1993–2009. For most age groups across both genders, disability prevalence fell between 1993 and 2009, despite considerable growth in the DSP ‘residual’. Having said that, all but one age–gender category shows growth in disability prevalence from 1993 to 1998 and all show a decline from 2003 to 2009, in both cases corresponding with the direction of change in the DSP roll.

Source: Authors' calculations using the confidentialised unit record files from the ABS's Disability, Ageing and Carers Survey.
Turning to labour market factors, in Australia, as elsewhere, cyclical downturns have tended to be associated with increased inflows to DSP and increases in the DSP roll, whereas upturns have not been so noticeably correlated with increased outflows or falls in DSP rolls (Cai and Gregory 2003; Productivity Commission 2011).2The usual explanation is that DSP or equivalent payments in other countries are absorbing states, in the sense that once on the payment, outflow is very unlikely. In a useful analogy, Berthoud (), writing about the United Kingdom, describes the jumps in disability rolls during cyclical downturns as a ratchet effect. Cai and Gregory show a reasonably close association between the unemployment rate and the DSP inflow rate over the period from 1971 until 1993, then draw attention to divergence between the two series since 1993, where DSP inflows remained at a high‐level despite rapidly falling unemployment.
Looking beyond 1999 suggests continued rapid growth in the DSP roll coinciding with falling unemployment until 2002. In other words, cyclical labour market factors do not appear to have driven the rapid growth of DSP rolls over the period 1993–2002, although the 1991 recession may have contributed to DSP growth in the early 1990s. After 2002, however, growth in the DSP roll levels out—although more for men than for women—as unemployment continues to fall.3McVicar () argues that a ‘hidden unemployment’ interpretation of disability benefit rolls is consistent with a delayed fall in disability rolls following sustained periods of falling unemployment. It is not until 2008 that DSP growth picks up again, coinciding with an upturn in unemployment following the Global Financial Crisis. At first glance, then, we cannot rule out that the sustained fall in unemployment from 1993 until 2008 had at least a moderating effect on DSP growth during the latter part of that period.
The Productivity Commission (2011), along with much of the international literature, suggests that structural change in the labour market may also be an important driver of growth in disability rolls. Specifically, qualification levels tend to be lower among people with disabilities, so falling demand for low‐skilled workers is one route by which structural change is thought to have impacted on the DSP roll in Australia and on disability rolls elsewhere, whether through lower relative wages or through job destruction (for example, McVicar 2011). We return to relative wages below, but seemingly at odds with the structural‐change story is that, at least over the 1993–2009 period, employment–population rates of people with disability have actually increased (Figure 5). Indeed, employment–population rates increased between 1993 and 1998, 1998 and 2003 and 2003 and 2009, suggesting that, if structural changes are part of the explanation, they mostly affected DSP receipt up to 1993.4Of course, structural change‐driven DSP growth can coincide with increasing employment rates amongst people with disability if flows into employment not from DSP outweigh flows out of employment onto DSP. It should also be noted that employment growth has been lower than for working‐aged people without disabilities: between 1993 and 2009, the employment–population rate of 15‐ to 64‐year olds without disability increased by 6.7 percentage points for men and 15.7 percentage points for women. (The notable exception is for men aged 45–54 years old.)

Source: Authors' calculations using the confidentialised unit record files from the ABS's Disability, Ageing and Carers Survey.
Another long‐running structural change in the Australian labour market is the increased labour force participation of women (from just over 50 per cent in 1982 to just over 70 per cent in 2011). Daly, Lucking and Schwabish (2013) argue that a similar trend in the United States has led to increases in the SSDI roll because eligibility for SSDI requires a track record of labour force participation and associated insurance payments. In contrast, eligibility for DSP in Australia does not require a record of participation. Consequently, while there may be other channels for a link between female labour force participation and DSP claims (including amongst men), on balance this appears unlikely to have played a major role in driving DSP residual growth over this period.
We have already shown that the increase in the female minimum age of eligibility for the Age Pension alone can explain a considerable fraction of the increase in DSP receipt. However, the period since 1982 has seen numerous other changes to eligibility criteria, payment rates and other aspects of the income‐support system. These have included several changes to DSP, but also important changes to other benefits that are likely to have impacted on DSP receipt.
The natural starting point for considering effects of these changes is to examine reliance on all forms of welfare amongst people with disabilities. This has the clear advantage of removing sensitivity to redistribution of beneficiaries between payment types and getting to the ‘bottom line’ on the effects of welfare system changes. Figure 6 presents evidence of the welfare reliance of people with disabilities over the 1993–2009 period, again drawing on data from the ABS's Disability, Ageing and Carers Survey. For each survey year, the figure presents the proportion of working‐aged people with a disability who are dependent on a government benefit as the main source of income, disaggregated by age group. It shows that welfare reliance among working‐aged people with disability actually declined overall and declined within most age–gender groups.

Source: Authors' calculations using the confidentialised unit record files from the ABS's Disability, Ageing and Carers Survey.
Taking the increase in the DSP roll together with the decrease in overall welfare reliance amongst people with disability between 1993 and 2009 suggests that a major shift between income support payments—from other payments to DSP—has taken place. One wonders whether there would be quite so much concern about the rise in DSP receipt were this simple fact widely appreciated.5Figure excludes two periods of strong growth in DSP: the period from 1991 to 1993 and the period from 2009 to 2011. It is possible (indeed, likely) that welfare reliance of people with disability did increase in those two sub‐periods and so it is not clear what has happened to disability‐related welfare reliance over the entire 1982–2011 period.
We now turn to consideration of the welfare system changes that could explain this substitution. Cai and Gregory (2003) show that there was little or no trend increase in the level of the (maximum) DSP payment relative to average weekly earnings—if anything, it fell in the most rapid DSP growth phase from 1991—suggesting that increases in the replacement rate are not an important explanation for DSP growth over the period to 1999. But, DSP has become more ‘generous’ relative to earnings at the lower end of the earnings distribution, at least over the period from 1993 to 2011, and this may be a more relevant comparator for low‐skilled workers with disabilities (for example, Bound and Burkhauser 1999). For example, over this period, adult full‐time weekly earnings at the 10th percentile increased by a factor of just under 2, whereas the maximum DSP payment has increased by a factor of approximately 2.4 (ABS 1994, 2013). Similarly, Figure 7 shows that the level of DSP payments has increased substantially relative to the level of the minimum wage over the period from 2000 to 2011 and particularly from 2008 onwards.

Sources: Authors' calculations. Unemployment benefit and DSP payment rates were obtained from Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (2013a) and minimum wage series were obtained from OECD (2013).
The DSP has also become more ‘generous’ relative to substitute income‐support payments, most notably unemployment benefit (known as ‘Newstart Allowance’ (NSA) since 1996), over the period from 1982 to 2011. The Productivity Commission (2011) shows that the level of the (maximum) NSA payment relative to DSP has fallen from parity in 1980 to 65 per cent in 2011. Figure 7 also shows the divergence between the DSP and NSA payment rates since the mid‐1990s and an acceleration of this divergence since 2008.
The DSP is means‐tested, so that those with incomes or assets over certain thresholds are ineligible for payments, although in practice it appears to be the income test that does most of the work. Specifically, there is an income test‐free area permitting non‐benefit income up to a specified amount without affecting DSP payments. Currently, additional non‐benefit income reduces DSP payments at a rate of 50 cents per dollar of income (the taper rate). Changes in the level of the free area, the taper rate and the level of the DSP benefit can all lead to changes in the income threshold at which entitlement is reduced to zero (that is, eligibility for DSP).
The free area and taper rate have periodically changed over the last 30 years, while the nominal benefit level has changed at least annually (see Department of Family and Community Services 2001). This has led to changes in the ‘bite’ of means‐testing, which we might expect to lead to changes in DSP growth via the associated changes in eligibility. Over the whole period from 1982 to 2011, the income threshold in fact increased a little faster than average earnings, corresponding to a ‘loosening’ of eligibility criteria for DSP. This may have contributed to growth in the DSP roll. Over the first decade of the 2000s, however, the income threshold has increased more slowly than average earnings, corresponding to a ‘tightening’ of eligibility criteria for DSP and coinciding with the flattening out of the DSP roll over the period.
There has also been a host of other changes to DSP eligibility that may have contributed to the residual growth in DSP. For the period to 1999, we can draw on Cai and Gregory (2003), who run through the major reforms to DSP eligibility and classify them into those that tighten eligibility criteria and those that loosen eligibility criteria. The main ‘tightening’ reform between 1982 and 1999 took place in 1987, when the required proportion of a claimant's incapacity caused by physical or mental impairment, rather than socio‐economic factors, was increased. Cai and Gregory suggest this led to a small decline in DSP inflow rates and a temporary levelling‐off of DSP growth from 1987 to 1990 is visible in Figure 2. The main ‘loosening’ reform came in November 1991 with the Disability Reform Package. One aspect of this reform was a partial reversal of the 1987 tightening. Furthermore, the requirement of an 85 per cent permanent incapacity for work was replaced with a requirement that a claimant be unable to work for 30 or more hours per week for at least the next 2 years. Cai and Gregory (2003) show that the DSP inflow rate increased following these reforms and, despite coinciding with rapid increases in unemployment associated with the 1991 recession, subsequently stayed high as the labour market improved. In contrast, The Productivity Commission (2011) argues that the reform package had little impact on DSP flows, although it does not cite any specific evidence in support of this assessment.
Recent welfare reforms have more consistently moved to tighten eligibility requirements for DSP, primarily for new claimants,6This focus of Australian reforms on new claimants is also reflected in other countries (for example, Burkhauser and Daly ). with most existing recipients grandfathered under existing rules. A major reform, introduced in July 2006, restricted DSP eligibility to new claimants with a work capacity of less than 15 hours/week, rather than 30 hours/week, as had previously been the case. Despite apparent expectations at the time, the reform appears to have led to only a small decline in DSP inflows (see Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations 2008) and more recent evidence suggests it had little impact on welfare dependency over the medium term (see Hanel, McVicar and Zakarova ). Nevertheless, the year from June 2006 is the only 12‐month period since 1983 over which the women's DSP roll fell, albeit only marginally.
Subsequent reforms have included increased coverage of disability employment services (announced in 2008 and not coinciding with any tangible fall in DSP growth) and implementation of a new DSP assessment procedure from September 2011, which effectively introduced a waiting period prior to DSP eligibility. Under the new assessment procedure, eligibility for DSP in most cases requires evidence that claimants were unable to obtain employment through an open employment service or through vocational rehabilitation over a period of up to 2 years, during which time claimants receive NSA and associated support services. Even if this latter reform impacts significantly on DSP growth looking forward, there appears to be little here, with the possible exception of the 1991 Disability Reform Package, to explain the ‘residual’ growth in the DSP roll over the last 30 years.
Cai and Gregory (2003) note that some other income‐support payments can be viewed as either substitutes or complements to DSP and that changes to the eligibility criteria for such benefits may have also impacted on DSP growth. They list a number of changes up to 1999 that, together, may have led to increased DSP inflows, including the phasing‐out of the Widow B Pension from 1987, imposing a time limit of 12 months on sickness benefits from 1991, abolishing Sheltered Employment Allowance in 1991, phasing out Rehabilitation Allowance from 1991 and the declining proportion of 60‐ and 64‐year olds covered by the Service Pension in the 1990s, relative to the 1970s and 1980s. In contrast, they suggest that introducing Mature Age Allowance in 1994 may have led to a fall in DSP inflows. They conclude, however, that such changes are likely to have had only a marginal impact on DSP growth.
Changes to activity‐test requirements for NSA in the 1990s and into the 2000s, however, may have contributed to increased flows into DSP. For example, in 1996, the Job Seeker Diary was introduced and, in 1998, Work for the Dole and the Mutual Obligation Initiative were introduced and were expanded in scope and application over subsequent years. Imposition of such requirements could precipitate increased DSP claims by NSA recipients with disabilities, consistent with the evidence for benefit shift discussed earlier. Changes to other payments since 1999 that may have contributed to DSP growth include the subsequent closure of Mature Age Allowance to new entrants from September 2003 (and abolishment from July 2007) and the tightening of eligibility requirements for Parenting Payment recipients that began in 2006 (Productivity Commission 2011) and have since been extended to apply to more recipients.7Fok and McVicar () provide evidence suggesting that these reforms shifted some recipients of Parenting Payment onto DSP, but they do not quantify the magnitude of the effect.
4 Conclusion and Outlook
Despite a consistently strong Australian labour market over the last decade or more and despite a series of reforms aimed at tightening eligibility requirements for DSP, the DSP roll has resumed its upward trajectory following what now appears to have been a brief pause in the mid‐2000s. Demographic factors have played a non‐trivial role in this, as has the increase in the women's Age Pension age. Reforms to DSP also seem likely to have played a part—possibly in different directions at different times—although it is difficult to point to any one reform as having had a major impact in terms of restraining DSP growth. Perhaps more important in terms of driving DSP growth have been reforms to other income‐support payments, such as increased conditionality for NSA and Parenting Payment and closure of some payment types to new entrants, together with the increased relative ‘generosity’ of DSP. In particular, we show that overall welfare receipt amongst people with disability has actually declined over the period 1993–2009; that is, that the increase in the DSP roll has coincided with greater decreases in receipt of other payments. In other words, benefit shift from other payments onto DSP appears to have played an important role in driving DSP growth over this period.
From this perspective, alarm over growth in DSP is probably overstated, a view reinforced by the evidence that employment rates of people with disability have been rising over the last two decades. This does not, however, mean that growth in DSP rolls should not be of concern to policymakers, particularly given evidence that DSP is typically an ‘absorbing state’ (see, for example, Cai, Vu and Wilkins 2007).
Looking forward over the next 10 years, ABS's projections suggest that the Australian population aged 16–64 years old will continue to grow—by around 2 million individuals—which will put upward pressure on the DSP roll. The population aged 16–64 years old will also age slightly, which can be expected to marginally increase the DSP recipiency rate. There is one more step in the current round of increases in the women's Age Pension age that is to come into effect in January 2014, with one already introduced in January 2012 just outside our period of study, both of which can also be expected to increase the DSP recipiency rate. Finally, the planned increase in the retirement age for both men and women, from 65 to 67 years old, to be introduced in a similar step‐wise fashion between 2017 and 2023, can also be expected to put upward pressure on the DSP recipiency rate. Applying 2011 recipiency rates8We apply the 16–64 years recipiency rate for population growth, gender and age‐specific recipiency rates for population ageing and gender‐specific recipiency rates for the 60–64 years age group to give our (conservative) estimate of the impact of increases in the retirement age from 65 to 67. We estimate the impact of the final two steps in the current round of women's retirement age increases (again conservatively) as being the same as in the previous two steps. to the above‐projected changes suggests increases in the DSP roll of around 100,000, 8,000, 26,000 and 85,000, respectively. So, demographic and retirement‐age factors alone could see the DSP roll reach 1 million within the next 10 years.
This upward pressure may be partly ameliorated by other factors. For example, forecasts suggest a relatively stable unemployment rate, at between 5 and 6 per cent, and recent employment trends for people with disabilities are encouraging.9For example, see the ‘Economic Outlook’ contained in the Australian Government Budget Report 2012–2013. The potential for further shifting of disabled income‐support recipients to DSP from other payments may also be limited, with perhaps the exception of some Parenting Payment recipients who are affected by changes introduced in 2013. Moreover, there has been some political pressure for a substantial one‐off increase in the level of NSA payments which, although so far resisted by government, could hold back further growth in financial incentives to switch from NSA to DSP were it to be adopted.
More recent reforms to DSP eligibility rules, although relatively minor, have consistently been of the ‘tightening’ variety or increasing‐incentives‐to‐work variety,10For example, 2012 saw the introduction of limited participation requirements for DSP recipients below the age of 35 years who are assessed as having a work capacity of 8–14 hours/week, alongside a doubling of the amount of paid work that DSP recipients are allowed to engage in without suspension or cancellation of their payments. including in some cases for existing recipients, and the most likely scenario over the next few years is a continuation of this trend. This may help to reduce future inflows into the program and may even increase outflows. However, if the goal is to reduce the size of the DSP roll, the current approach of small‐scale changes to eligibility requirements, primarily directed at new claimants, is likely to take a long time to have a significant impact, especially in the context of the other upward pressures on the number of DSP recipients. DisabilityCare Australia, which is aimed at people with severe impairments, rather than people at the margin between claiming DSP and remaining in the labour market, also seems unlikely to have a major impact on the DSP roll, and in any case, it will be some time before the scheme is likely to impact at a national level. But, other countries—most notably, the Netherlands—have managed to achieve substantial reductions in disability rolls (see Burkhauser and Daly 2011) and Australia may be able to learn from this experience. Burkhauser, Daly and Lucking (2013)—in this issue—explain how.




