1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 2002
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 25/01/2002
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This section examines the size, growth, distribution and age structure of the Australian population. There is an emphasis on changes over time, especially changes in the growth rate of the population.
Australia's growth rate of 1.2% for the 12 months to June 2000 was slightly below the overall world growth rate of 1.3%. As shown in table 5.2, growth rates for Japan (0.2%), Germany (0.3%), the United Kingdom (0.3%) and New Zealand (0.5%) were considerably lower than that of Australia. In contrast, the populations of Singapore (with a growth rate of 3.6%), Papua New Guinea (2.5%), Hong Kong (1.8%), Indonesia (1.7%) and India (1.6%) grew at faster rates than Australia's population.
Population size Australia's population of 19.2 million at June 2000 was around 2 million greater than in 1990 and over 15 million more than the 1901 population of 3.8 million. Graph 5.3 shows the growth in Australia's population since 1788. The main component of Australia's population growth has been natural increase (the difference between births and deaths), which has contributed about two-thirds of the total growth since the beginning of the twentieth century. Net overseas migration has also contributed to natural increase, albeit indirectly, through children born to migrants. Components of population growth are discussed in more detail in the next section. Table 5.4 shows that population growth has not occurred evenly across the States and Territories. At Federation, South Australia had nearly twice the population of Western Australia, which in turn had only slightly more people than Tasmania. However, in 1982 Western Australia surpassed South Australia as the fourth most populous State.
Population growth Population growth results from natural increase and net overseas migration (net permanent and long-term arrivals and departures plus an adjustment for category jumping). Australia's population grew from 3.8 million at the turn of the century to 19.2 million in 2000. During the 1950s Australia experienced consistently high rates of growth, with an average annual increase of 2.4% from the beginning of 1950 to the end of 1959, while during the 1930s Australia experienced relatively low growth (0.9%). Natural increase has been the main source of the growth since the turn of the century, contributing two-thirds of the total increase between 1901 and 2000. Net overseas migration, while a significant source of growth, is more volatile, fluctuating under the influence of government policy as well as political, economic and social conditions in Australia and the rest of the world. The yearly growth rates due to natural increase and net overseas migration from 1901 to 2000 are shown in graph 5.5. In 1901 the rate of natural increase was 14.9 persons per 1,000 population. Over the next four decades the rate increased (to a peak of 17.4 per thousand population in the years 1912, 1913 and 1914) then declined (to a low of 7.1 per thousand population in 1934 and 1935). In the mid to late 1940s the rate increased sharply as a result of the beginning of the baby boom and the immigration of many young people who then had children in Australia, with a plateau of rates of over 13.0 persons per 1,000 population for every year from 1946 to 1962. Since 1962, falling fertility has led to a fall in the rate of natural increase. In 1971 the rate of natural increase was 12.7 persons per 1,000 population; a decade later it had fallen to 8.5. In 1996 the rate of natural increase fell below seven for the first time, with the downward trend continuing in the late 1990s. ABS population projections indicate that continued low fertility, combined with the increase in deaths from an ageing population, will result in natural increase falling below zero sometime in the mid 2030s. Since 1901, the crude death rate has fallen from about 12.2 deaths per 1,000 population to 6.7 in 2000. Crude birth and death rates from 1901 to 2000 are shown in graph 5.6.
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