After last week reporting that some wealthy seniors are deliberately ‘upsizing’ to more expensive homes in order to receive bigger Aged Pension payments, The Australian’s Adam Creighton reports today that elderly Australians living in $1m-plus homes are claiming $6.3 billion in pension payments:
Retirees living in $1m-plus homes are receiving more than $6.3bn a year in age pension payments, enough to fund income tax cuts that would supercharge economic growth.
More than 255,000 pensioners across the nation, mainly in elite pockets of Sydney and Melbourne, live on taxpayer-funded incomes while owning homes worth more than $1m — a more than twentyfold increase in a decade — according to analysis of social security data by ANU.
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Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
