Age Pension recipients as a share of the population: how the shares are worked out

The chart Age Pension recipients and Australian residents aged 65 and over, since 2013 can show the number of Age Pension recipients as a share of the estimated resident population of Australia aged 65 and over and 67 and over. This page sets out the rule, the two series, how the quarters are matched, the rounding and what the share does not measure.

The shares are worked out by Retirement Wealth from the two published series. They are not published by the Department of Social Services or the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The counts are the ones on the chart's page: the recipients from the Department of Social Services, the population estimates from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, both recorded in this site's statistical series. The chart's "Australian residents" are the ABS estimated resident population of Australia, which the ABS's methodology says includes all people who usually live in Australia, regardless of nationality, citizenship or visa status, except people present for foreign consular or diplomatic reasons.

The rule

For each quarter that both series hold, divide the count of Age Pension recipients in that quarter by the population estimate for the end of that quarter, and write the result as a percentage:

share = Age Pension recipients in the quarter ÷ population aged 65 and over (or 67 and over) at the end of the quarter × 100, to one decimal place

For example, in the March 2026 quarter the department counted 2,701,730 Age Pension recipients (as at 27 March 2026), and the ABS estimated the population aged 65 and over at 31 March 2026 at 4,950,368 (preliminary). So 2,701,730 ÷ 4,950,368 × 100 = 54.6%.

The two series

• Age Pension recipients. Age Pension recipients, Australia: the number of recipients at or near the end of each quarter, as at the department's extraction date, from the table of payment recipients by payment type and state and territory in the DSS Benefit and Payment Recipient Demographics quarterly data (Department of Social Services, DSS Benefit and Payment Recipient Demographics - quarterly data). The latest quarter's file: Expanded DSS Benefit and Payment Recipient Demographics - June 2026. The quarter-by-quarter counts, with the file each was read from, are at /api/v2/series/age_pension_recipients.json.
• Population aged 65 and over. Estimated resident population of Australia aged 65 years and over, persons, at the end of each quarter, summed from the ABS estimates by single year of age (Australian Bureau of Statistics, National, state and territory population, catalogue number 3101.0). From the latest release: National, state and territory population, March 2026. The quarter-by-quarter estimates are at /api/v2/series/population_65_plus.json.
• Population aged 67 and over. Estimated resident population of Australia aged 67 years and over, persons, at the end of each quarter, summed from the ABS estimates by single year of age (Australian Bureau of Statistics, National, state and territory population, catalogue number 3101.0). From the latest release: National, state and territory population, March 2026. The quarter-by-quarter estimates are at /api/v2/series/population_67_plus.json.

Matching the quarters

• The count of recipients is as at the department's extraction date in the quarter (the as_at date of each observation, shown beside each count in the chart's table): the last day of the quarter in 34 of the 52 files, and from 1 to 6 days before it in the other 18, the first of those the March 2021 quarter. The population estimate is for the last day of the quarter. The two are matched by quarter, so a quarter's share divides the count in that quarter's file by the estimate for that quarter's end. The department says its extraction method for the Age Pension changed between the December 2020 and March 2021 quarters and asks for caution when comparing those two quarters.
• Nothing between quarters is interpolated or smoothed: the chart joins the quarterly shares with straight lines and plots nothing in between.
• The share runs to the March 2026 quarter, the latest quarter with both counts. National, state and territory population, June 2026, expected 17 December 2026, extends it to the June 2026 quarter.

Two populations

The chart offers the population aged 65 and over and the population aged 67 and over. The Age Pension age rose from 65 to 67 between 1 July 2017 and 1 July 2023 (65 years from 1 July 2013, 65 years and 6 months from 1 July 2017, 66 years from 1 July 2019, 66 years and 6 months from 1 July 2021 and 67 years from 1 July 2023), so for the quarters in between, the share of people at or above that age lies between the two shares shown: the population at pension age was smaller than the population aged 65 and over and larger than the population aged 67 and over.

What the share does not measure

• The count covers Age Pension recipients paid by Services Australia. The department says some people have their Age Pension paid by the Department of Veterans' Affairs instead; they are not in the count, and nor are DVA's own payments such as the service pension. Other income support payments are separate columns of the department's table.
• The count includes recipients whose address is overseas or not known, while the population estimate counts people usually resident in Australia. The two do not cover exactly the same people, so the share is a ratio of the two published counts, not the proportion of residents at pension age who receive the pension.
• From the December 2022 quarter the department rounds its counts to the nearest 5.

Rounding

• The counts are used as published, in whole persons.
• Each share is rounded to one decimal place, half up. The data files hold the same values.

Revisions

The Australian Bureau of Statistics revises its population estimates as data on births, deaths and migration arrives: the latest quarters are preliminary, then revised, then final. When a later release changes a quarter's estimate, the value is replaced, the earlier value is kept in the series file as a revision with the release it came from, and the share for that quarter is worked out again. The department does not revise a quarter's count once published, as far as its data set shows.

The data

• The shares, both populations, as CSV and as JSON, each row with the quarter, the count, the population, the share and derived: true.
• The chart, with the counts by quarter and their sources.

Age Pension recipients: Department of Social Services, Australian Government, DSS Benefit and Payment Recipient Demographics - quarterly data, sourced on 24 October 2026, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia (CC BY 3.0 AU).

Population estimates: Australian Bureau of Statistics (March 2026) National, state and territory population, ABS Website, accessed 24 October 2026. CC BY 4.0.

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