The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) partnered with the University of NSW to examine which groups were at risk of poverty in their lifetimes.
The study found the depth of poverty experienced by Australians on income support payments was severe.
On average, one in eight people - including one in six children - lived below the poverty line in 2019-20.
Based on 50 per cent of median incomes, the poverty line is $489 a week for a single adult and $1027 a week for a couple with two children.
The study found poverty in Australia was highly gendered and affected single-parent families, migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds and people living with a disability at above average rates.
One in five renters and more than half the people in public housing lived below the poverty line.
This compared to 10 per cent of mortgage holders and eight per cent of home owners without a mortgage.
ACOSS head Cassandra Goldie said it was incumbent on all MPs to hear concerns about poverty, and raise welfare payments during the cost of living crisis.
"We've got many debates going on in Australia: debates about submarines, debates about our position in the region ... at the moment, we now have people who are going without food on a regular basis," she told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.
"We have a shameful history in Australia of taking away resources for people who needed the support the most and increasingly delivering more cash into the hands of people who have already enough."
The welfare advocacy organisation is urging the government to lift income support payments to at least $76 a day, double rent assistance and increase supplements for single parents and people living with a disability.
For people on the JobSeeker payment, 60 per cent lived in poverty.
Labor MP Alicia Payne and Liberal MP Bridget Archer have launched a cross-party parliamentary friends of ending poverty group.
The group will provide a non-partisan forum to discuss the impact of poverty in Australia and how the parliament can address it.
Independent economist Chris Richardson, who attended the launch, said the government could "walk and chew gum" when it came to repairing the budget while lifting income supports for the most vulnerable.
He said the JobSeeker payment was "stingy by design" and set up in a way to slowly shrink as a share of wages.
"We have a system in Australia that links our unemployment benefits to inflation, whereas, of course, overall living standards essentially move with wages," Mr Richardson told AAP.
With wages typically moving faster than inflation, he said JobSeeker should be linked to wages as well as given a one-off boost to account for the long decline as a share of the average wage.
While sky-high inflation and the need for budget repair are also concerns for the federal government, Mr Richardson said these concerns should not be enough to derail a JobSeeker increase.
"Any society tries to achieve two things: prosperity and fairness," he said.
"Australia does an OK job on both, but we could do better on fairness."
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