What would a basic income cost in Australia?
Pick a country, who gets it and how much a month. Everything is calculated on this device; nothing is sent anywhere.
Total cost per year
43.1 billion Australian dollars
about 27.9 billion US dollars
27.6 million people × 130 Australian dollars a month × 12 months
Compared with
- Government expense (central) (2022)5.6%
- Government revenue (central, excl. grants) (2022)5.9%
- Tax revenue (central government) (2022)6.6%
- GDP (nominal) (2025)1.6%
Australia in numbers
Australia has a population of 27.6 million (2025) and a GDP of 2.78 trillion Australian dollars (about 1.8 trillion US dollars) in 2025.
Paying everyone 130 Australian dollars a month would cost 43.1 billion Australian dollars a year (about 27.9 billion US dollars), or 1.6% of GDP. That equals 5.6% of central government expense (2022), 5.9% of its revenue (2022), and 6.6% of its tax revenue (2022).
Children only (under 18: 5.77 million) would cost 9 billion Australian dollars a year (0.32% of GDP); adults only (18 and over: 21.8 million), 34.1 billion Australian dollars (1.2%).
Default amount: 130 Australian dollars a month is the World Bank's international poverty line of $3.00 a day (2021 PPP), converted into Australian dollars with the World Bank's PPP conversion factor for household consumption (2025) and rounded to two significant figures. It is a reference point, not a policy proposal; change it above.
How to read this
This is the gross cost: the total paid out. The real net cost depends on which taxes fund it, which benefits or tax breaks it replaces and whether the payment is taxed. The population, budget and GDP figures are not all from the same year (see the sources).
Sources for the figures
- Population
- World Bank: population, total (SP.POP.TOTL), and population by single year of age 0 to 17 (SP.POP.AG00.FE.IN … SP.POP.AG17.MA.IN), 2025
- SP.POP.AG00.FE.IN … SP.POP.AG17.MA.IN
- Government expense and tax revenue
- World Bank: central government expense, revenue excluding grants and tax revenue, % of GDP (GC.XPN.TOTL.GD.ZS, GC.REV.XGRT.GD.ZS, GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS), 2022
- Default amount
- World Bank: international poverty line of $3.00 a day (2021 PPP), June 2025 update
- World Bank: PPP conversion factor, household final consumption (PA.NUS.PRVT.PP), 2025
- Retrieved from the World Bank API on November 9, 2026 (CC BY 4.0). Government figures are central government, as a share of GDP in their own year, applied to the latest GDP.