摘要: This chapter focuses on the impact on poverty of changes to disability income support since the 1970s. Recognition of the complex interaction between disability and poverty experiences has grown internationally (Mitra et al., 2017; Saunders, 2007). In 2014, 36.2 per cent of people with disability1 in receipt of the Disability Support Pension (DSP) lived below the poverty line (ACOSS, 2016). Currently 825 000 people are in receipt of the DSP, costing about $15 billion per year to the welfare state (Morris, Wilson and Soldatic, 2015). The original pension provision for people with disability was the Commonwealth Invalid and Old-Age Pension 1908 (see chapter 5 of this volume). Since its inception, the disability income support system was targeted through eligibility criteria of ‘permanently incapacitated for work’, medical assessment and later ‘partial capacity to work’under the Howard government (Soldatic and Grover, 2013). Despite the various labels accorded to the Invalid Pension, the criteria have always been restricted to people with a permanent disability (Mays, 2016).