Media Article
Indigenous health gap closes by five years
Joel Gibson Indigenous Affairs Reporter
April 10, 2009
THE Australian Bureau of Statistics will publish a new estimate of the gap in life expectancy between indigenous and other Australians this month - and it is expected to be far narrower than the 17 years widely labelled a national disgrace.
But governments will not be able to claim progress in closing the gap because the new estimate, expected to be closer to 12 years, is based on a different statistical method.
The ABS director of demographic statistics, Patrick Corr, said the new estimate had not been finalised but was not expected to differ much from a discussion paper published late last year that put the Australia-wide gap at 11.8 years.
"We're just quality-assuring what we're doing now. We've made some slight modifications to the method but they are really not big," Mr Corr said.
The widely quoted 17-year gap was derived with a method called "Bhat with unexplained growth", named after the Indian demographer P.N. Mari Bhat, who created it for developing countries.
Mr Corr said it had been deemed inappropriate for Australia and was exposed as flawed by a study in 2006 called the Census Data Enhancement (CDE) Indigenous Mortality Quality Study.
Statisticians have declared the previous estimates "implausible" and point out the new method is being refined. But they have received positive feedback from peers in New Zealand and Canada and at Charles Darwin University.
According to the new method, known as the CDE-adjusted Direct Method, life expectancy for indigenous men is estimated at 66.9 years and for women at 72.6 years. It is lowest in the Northern Territory, with results of 61.5 and 69.2 years, and highest in NSW, with 69.6 and 74.8 years.
For men, the difference with non-indigenous people is 11.8 years Australia-wide, 9.1 in NSW and 17.2 in the NT. For women, it is 10 years Australia-wide, 7.8 in NSW and 13.4 in the NT.
The new method "is data-based and does not require assumptions ... It also produces results that are considered to be more plausible, particularly in regard to the coverage of death registrations", the paper reported. The old method required making "extensive assumptions".
Although old and new will be impossible to compare, the new estimates will be welcome news for the Federal Government, which has set a target of closing the life-expectancy gap within a generation.
The Indigenous Affairs Minister, Jenny Macklin, said that even with a reduced estimate, "there is no question the life expectancy gap is too wide".
"This is why the Government is taking comprehensive action to close the gap by boosting funding and undertaking major reform."
