Are literacy levels affecting Disability Support Pension approvals?

A Disability Support Pension can mean so much to the quality of someone’s life. In Australia, four per cent of working-age people receive the Disability Support Pension. Behind this figure of successful applicants, however, is a huge 57 per cent of claims that were rejected in the last four years.

Nary Hong is a PhD candidate in Economics from the University of NSW. In her research, she found that the largest non-medical reason for these rejections was that the applicant didn’t give the right information. She also found that having help with reading and writing increased a person’s chance of receiving the pension by about 20 per cent. She believes that this data builds a strong case for the need to provide reading and writing help to pension applicants to make sure they are getting the benefits they are entitled to.

You can read Nary Hong’s article and find a link to the paper she presented to the Australian Conference of Economists on the Conversation website.