Australia has experienced 20 years of sustained economic growth and is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Despite our wealth, the latest ACOSS Poverty in Australia report (2016) found of the three million people living in poverty in Australia, 731,000 are children, representing one in six (17%) of children under the age of 15. This figure has increased by 2 percentage points over the past ten years. Single parent families locked out of paid work are at particularly high risk of poverty. Forty per cent of all children in poverty in Australia live in single parent households.