Research into how Australians used $38 billion they withdrew from their superannuation accounts during the first stages of the COVID pandemic is based on two extraordinarily large data sets.
The paper,entitled “Early Pension Withdrawal as Stimulus” and availablehere,is the first major economic analysis of the super withdrawal that became the second-largest direct stimulus program used by the Morrison government.
Economists Steven Hamilton,Geoffrey Liu and Tristram Sainsbury first drew on data held by the Australian Bureau of Statistics through the Multi-Agency Data Integration Project.
This links de-identified,individual-level data collections from agencies including the Australian Taxation Office and the Social Services Department.
The tax office was responsible for approving access to the scheme.
This was able to shed light on all 4.5 million approved applications for superannuation withdrawals under the scheme.
This gave the researchers the superannuation balance of people as of June 30,2019,previous super contributions and past withdrawals.
It also included the occupation,whether a person had a spouse,their number of children and the income derived from wages,interest,rent and dividends.
The same data project gave researchers access to anonymous weekly pre-tax wages as well as welfare payments.