Income inequality
Tracking our income inequality ensures we understand who is benefiting from our economic prosperity and who is missing out. This indicator measures income dispersion in the ACT comparing different income groups.
The Wellbeing Data Dashboard is intended to measure wellbeing progress over time, with updates made every two years.
ACT Treasury publishes the latest key economic indicators at Economic Indicators for the ACT.
Disposable household income percentile ratio - P20/P50 ratio
This measure shows the spread of household income in the ACT. It helps us to see how the benefits from our economic prosperity are distributed across the community.
As of February 2026, there was no new data available for this measure. The ABS has indicated that they will not be releasing statistics based on the 2023-24 Survey of Income and Housing (SIH), as the data did not meet the ABS’ high standards for official statistics. This leaves the most recent SIH data on the dashboard being for 2019-20. The ABS expects results from the 2025-26 SIH to be published from mid-2027.
In 2019-20, the bottom 20% of households earnt an income of 62.8% of the median (that is, a ratio of 0.628). This compares with a ratio of 0.61 for all of Australia. This is the latest year for which data are available.
The bottom 20% of households earned an income of $699 in 2007-08 (when this data series commenced) and $829 in 2019-20 in the ACT. This compares with $1,221 and $1,320 over the same period for median households.
Data source
The data is published on the Australian Bureau of Statistics website.
A link to download the latest data is below:
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/finance/household-income-and-wealth-australia/2019-20#data-downloads
Table 1. Household income and income distribution, Australia.
Table 14. Household income and income distribution, states and territories.
Chart description
Line graph of the ratio of income between low-income households and the median in the ACT, by financial year. In 2019-20, the bottom 20% of households earnt an average income of 63% of the middle compared to 62.4% in 2017-18.
Technical notes
The ABS determined these results from the Survey of Income and Housing, 2019-20.
This measure shows the ratio of the average weekly equivalised disposable income between low-income households (at the 20th percentile) and the median (at the 50th percentile). Equivalised incomes account for variation in household size and composition, and savings in average costs that result from a larger household. All references to income are for the average weekly equivalised disposable income.
