Ideas@TheCentre
Reducing the longevity gap for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has announced that it has reduced the longevity ‘gap’ for Indigenous Australians from 17 years to 11.5 years for men and 9.7 for women. But both the old and the new figures are averages for very disparate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups that rely heavily on data for the more than 60% of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders who work in mainstream jobs and who own, are buying, or commercially renting their houses.
Although still skewed toward lower socio-economic strata, like other aspiring social groups like migrants, this group probably has similar longevity experience to other Australians. As more Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders vote with their feet to work in the mainstream, average longevity is rising, but that says nothing about settlements on communal land in crowded Aboriginal association housing, where the absence of property rights and education denies them employment and condemns them to welfare dependent life-styles that lead to early death. The real longevity ‘gap’ between these communities and the rest of Australia is probably still more than 20 years.
Professor Helen Hughes is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies.
