Australians who believe that the country’s income distribution is unfair also tend to be less satisfied with democracy. The finding comes from new ANU analysis, and it has implications for policymakers working on democratic resilience.
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Based on Biddle, N., and Gray, M., (2024) ‘Income inequality and democratic resilience – Impacts and policy choices’ Australian Resilient Democracy Research and Data Network Discussion Paper 1, The Australian National University, published November 2024.
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Analysing data dating back to 2018, ANU experts have found that concerns about income inequality are strongly related to dissatisfaction in democracy.
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While closing income gaps would likely protect democratic institutions, perceptions of inequality may matter most.
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The findings suggest that democratic reforms, including those outlined in the Strengthening Australian Democracy report, would benefit from a stronger focus on economic wellbeing.
The Department of Home Affairs’ 2024 Strengthening Democracy report describes Australia’s democratic resilience as “strong, but vulnerable” and states that “community concerns about economic inequality are connected to a waning sense of national belonging.”
Now, ANU experts have investigated inequality as a risk to democratic resilience and found that roughly a third of Australians aren’t satisfied with democracy in the country. They also found that Australians who see economic wellbeing as a government responsibility report feeling less satisfied with democracy.
In the surveys, respondents applied the statement, ‘On the whole, do you think it should or should not be the government’s responsibility to …?’ to a range of roles of government, indicating how much they agree.
The roles of government that correlated most positively with feeling satisfied with democracy were:
The roles of government that correlated most negatively with feeling satisfied with democracy were:
In total, more than half of those surveyed think Australia’s income distribution is ‘unfair’ or ‘very unfair’. Both these responses had a strong relationship with dissatisfaction with democracy.
In the ‘very unfair’ group, the relationship was significant. Just over 51 per cent were satisfied with democracy – some 18 percentage points lower than the survey average.
The results show that the majority of Australians are concerned that incomes are becoming too unequal. They also indicate that if these concerns were addressed, satisfaction with democracy would improve.
"In total, more than half of those surveyed think Australia’s income distribution is ‘unfair’ or ‘very unfair’."
