Australia has made no progress in a commitment it made six years ago to halve the the number of people living in poverty by 2030.
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New research shows unless urgent action is taken between 280,000 to 550,000 young Australians born in the next decade face a future of poverty.
A report by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia titled Disrupting Disadvantage says the country needs to fundamentally change how it supports and identifies people in disadvantage.
It urges the use of data to act earlier to prevent children being locked in a cycle of poverty.
CEDA chief economist Jarrod Ball said the full impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are yet to be revealed.
"But there is already evidence the pandemic has further exacerbated the financial, employment and health hardships of Australia's most vulnerable," Mr Ball says.
"Unless Australia addresses these issues now, we will be entrenching the next generation of poverty and disadvantage."
In 2015, Australia committed to halving the proportion of men, women and children living in poverty by 2030 under the UN Sustainable Development Goals initiative.
Six years on, Australia has made no progress against this commitment with the proportion of Australians living in poverty remaining above 13 per cent.
"What is of most concern is that despite making no progress towards this commitment to significantly reduce poverty, governments have set no intermediate targets, milestones, reform actions or reporting frameworks to change course," Mr Ball said.
"By choosing to do nothing and ignoring the need to change Australia's piecemeal social support system, we are making a choice as a society to commit too many young Australians into entrenched disadvantage."
Close to one-in-five (17.7 per cent) of Australian children under the age of 15 are living in poverty, and research shows they are three times more likely to experience poverty in adulthood.
Support for the disadvantaged is fragmented and disconnected, spread between federal and state governments with little information sharing between programs, resulting in individuals and families slipping through the cracks, the report said.
CEDA wants to see shared data across all levels of government to address this problem and identify those most at risk, enabling early intervention strategies to break the cycle of disadvantage.
CEDA recommends a new intergovernmental agreement by 2025, linking federal government data, such as Medicare and Centrelink, with that from state governments, such as health, child protection and justice data.
It would work in a similar way to New Zealand's integrated data infrastructure.
"We have an obligation to use all the tools at our disposal to overcome entrenched disadvantage," co-author of the report and CEDA senior economist Cassandra Winzar said.
Australian Associated Press
