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Demographic Consequences of the ‘Closing the Gap’ Indigenous Policy in Australia

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Abstract

The demography of Indigenous Australians is distinguished from that of other Australians by relatively high mortality and fertility leading to very different composition by age. This is beginning to change as movement towards a convergence in vital rates is observed. In the meantime, the Australian government has established targets for Indigenous socioeconomic outcomes that simultaneously impact on, and are affected by, the course of demographic change. This paper examines the relationship between these targets and projected Indigenous demographic outcomes that arise from incipient population ageing. The most likely scenario is movement into an indeterminate period of potential demographic dividend. If demand for Indigenous labour expands alongside reductions in age dependency this could provide for dramatic improvement in Indigenous economic circumstances. However, caution is warranted as disparities in adult mortality require long-term solutions and movement into a second phase of demographic transition appears likely to be delayed.

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Notes

  1. In our analysis, we use age dependency ratios rather than economic support ratios which focus on the ratio of the working population to the consuming population (with those aged under 15 weighted at 0.5 or 0). There are a number of reasons for this. First, the largest expenditure items for governments with regards to the Indigenous population are education services and housing, both of which are poorly captured in economic support ratios. The second reason is that employment is ambiguously defined in the Australian census with uncertainty around whether a common labour market program for the Indigenous population (the community development and employment program (CDEP) scheme is undercounted. Third, a large minority of Indigenous Australians participate in hunting, fishing and gathering with the resources gained contributing to household consumption in ways unknown.

  2. There are however limitations with the data available all of which are common to self-identified populations. In particular, there is a strong potential for numerator-denominator bias in calculating Indigenous life tables with Indigenous status on the census (the denominator) self identified but Indigenous status on the deaths registry (the numerator) often filled out by a third party. This issue is mitigated to a certain extent by the ABS linking administrative data on deaths to census data at the unit record level to calculate Indigenous life expectancy (ABS (2009b). However, this only reduces the problem rather than eliminating it as the method is highly dependent on the quality of the name and address information on both the census and deaths records.

  3. Net overseas migration in Australia is derived from international departure and arrivals cards. These do not include the standard Indigenous identifier question.

  4. Unfortunately, the data that this analysis is based on does not give more detailed information for the Indigenous population aged 65 years and over.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge that funding for this paper came from the Australian Commonwealth and State/Territory governments through the Indigenous Populations Project. In addition we would like to thank Professor Martin Bell and Dr Jeromey Temple for constructive comments on earlier drafts of the paper and associated methodology. We would like to thank Gillian Cosgrove who gave editorial assistance and prepared the final document as well as Mandy Yap and Hilary Bek for detailed proofing. Finally, we would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of the paper who gave a number of thoughtful and insightful comments.

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  1. Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia

    Nicholas Biddle & John Taylor

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  1. Nicholas Biddle
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Correspondence to Nicholas Biddle.

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Biddle, N., Taylor, J. Demographic Consequences of the ‘Closing the Gap’ Indigenous Policy in Australia. Popul Res Policy Rev 31, 571–585 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-012-9235-8

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