Key points
- Life expectancy for men and women has fallen over the past twelve months.
- The Australian Bureau of Statistics says this is due to excess deaths from COVID-19.
- Australia has the fourth highest life expectancy in the world.
Life expectancy from birth in Australia has fallen slightly again for a second year and has fallen in the global rankings.
The life expectancy for an Australian girl born today is 85.1 years, while for a boy it is 81.1 years, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures released on Friday.
This represents a small decrease of 0.2 years for women and 0.1 years for men compared to figures twelve months ago.
Figures from 2023 showed a decrease of 0.1 years for both genders.
A 60-year-old Australian man can expect to live another 24.2 years, and a woman another 27.1 years, which is longer than life expectancy at birth because the first decades of life are more difficult to survive.
Where does Australia rank globally in terms of life expectancy?
Australia has the fourth highest life expectancy at birth of all OECD countries, equaling Spain at 83.2 years.
Australia was previously ranked third above Spain.
Japan has the highest figure at 84.1 years, followed by Switzerland with 83.7 years and South Korea with 83.6 years.
Life expectancy has fallen slightly in all OECD countries due to the pandemic. The average is now 81 years.
Human life expectancy at birth increased by about 30 years in high-income countries between 1900 and 2000.
However, since 1990, overall improvements in life expectancy have slowed, according to a recent analysis published in the journal Nature.
The article predicts that French people have the highest chance of living to 100, with a chance of about 8 percent, while Australians have between 2 and 3 percent chance of living to 100.
Why has life expectancy declined?
According to the ABS, life expectancy data has been affected by the high number of deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that started in 2020.
Beidar Cho, ABS head of demography, said: “The years 2021-2023 saw the highest number of COVID-19 deaths in Australia at 15,982, an increase of 4,100 from 2020-2022.
“Despite the decline, Australians still have a higher life expectancy than many comparable countries, such as New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Canada.”
The only part of Australia where life expectancy has increased over the past 12 months is the Northern Territory, where female life expectancy increased by 1.2 years to 80.4 years. For men they increased by 1.5 years to 76.4 years.
However, the Northern Territory has the lowest life expectancy for both men and women.
ACT has the highest grade of 85.7 for women and 81.7 for men, followed by Western Australia with 85.7 for women and 81.7 for men.
What do we know about the life expectancy of young people?
The life expectancy of people under 50 appears to be stagnating more worryingly than that of the elderly. by scientists Sergey Timonin and Tim Adair shows.
Australians born between the 1930s and 1960s are likely to live longer than those in a non-English-speaking comparison group and all other English-speaking countries, they wrote in the Conversation.
The comparison group was similar to the average in 14 other high-income, low-mortality countries from Western Europe (such as France and Norway), plus Japan.
But Australians born in the 1970s had a lower life expectancy than the comparison group.
This means that life expectancy at birth in Australia is higher overall than the average for the non-English group. But when broken down by age, the results show a clear difference in life expectancy depending on when you were born.
The authors suggest that real improvement could come from measures that reduce the inequalities and structural disadvantages that lead to poor health outcomes, such as improving access to education and security of employment and housing, supporting mental health and drug-related safety, and tackling
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