2.1 Indigenous Mortality Project
As part of the Australian Government's Closing the Gap strategy, the ABS will deliver aggregated statistical information to improve estimates of Indigenous life expectancy.
Death registrations data are a key input for estimating life expectancy and are provided to the ABS as an administrative dataset by the State and Territory Registrars of Births, Deaths and Marriages. Whilst most Indigenous deaths are registered, for some the Indigenous status is not correctly identified, or identified inconsistently with respect to the Indigenous status in the Census.
A Census Data Enhancement (CDE) quality study undertaken in 2006 showed that estimates of Indigenous life expectancy could be significantly improved by adjusting for differences between the Indigenous status in death registrations and the Census and Post Enumeration Survey. As such, adjustment factors obtained in the 2006 quality study were used to derive adjusted Indigenous deaths for use in compiling life tables and life expectancy estimates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. For further information see Experimental Life Tables for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, 2005-2007 (ABS cat. no. 3302.0.55.003). This same method will be applied for the 2011 Census.
The 2011 Indigenous Mortality Project will:
- assess the consistency of Indigenous status as reported in death registration and Census data;
- estimate measures of undercoverage of Indigenous deaths by state/territory and remoteness areas of Australia;
- investigate the feasibility of applying adjustment factors for Indigenous deaths output data; and
- provide input into the compilation of Indigenous life tables, life expectancy estimates and Indigenous/non-Indigenous differences in life expectancy and other mortality measures, that are consistent with population estimates based on the adjusted 2011 Census of Population and Housing.
Benefits of the Indigenous Mortality Project
The benefits of the Indigenous Mortality project in 2006 are outlined in
Appendix 1.
In addition to the benefits achieved in 2006, repeating this project will enable comparable life expectancy estimates between 2006 and 2011 to be produced by using a consistent methodology.
The project enables reporting against the COAG target "to close the life expectancy gap within a generation".
The project also provides information on the quality of COAG performance indicators relating to the mortality rates of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
More broadly, the project provides information to inform strategies for improving Indigenous identification in administrative data.
Data involved in the Indigenous Mortality Project
This project will temporarily link the 2011 Census data to death registration data using names and addresses during the Census processing period. All death registrations from August 2011 to August 2012 will be linked to the 2011 Census. Once the purpose of the project has been fulfilled, all linked datasets will be destroyed.
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