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Special Article - Life expectancy of first generation migrants (Sep Qtr 2001)


This article was published in Australian Demographic Statistics (Cat. no. 3101.0), September Quarter 2001.

INTRODUCTION

Internationally, Australia's life expectancy at birth is one of the highest in the world, falling behind Japan by 1-2 years, which has the highest life expectancy. Life expectancies at birth and other ages are used as measures of the level of mortality of a population. They are also used for assessing trends and differentials in mortality.

In 2000, nearly 24% of Australia's population (or 4.5 million people) were born overseas in one of over 200 countries. With such a large migrant population, how does the life expectancy of first generation migrants compare to that of the Australian-born population? This article compares the life expectancy of first generation migrants from 20 countries with that of Australian-born residents. These countries represented 69% of the migrant population in 2000.

LIFE TABLES

A life table is a statistical model which is constructed from the mortality rates of a population at different ages. Life tables may be complete or abridged, depending on the age interval used in their compilation. Complete life tables contain data by single year of age, while abridged life tables contain data for five year age groups. For the 1997-1999 period life expectancy at birth for the Australian population was estimated at 76 years for males and 82 years for females.

Abridged life tables calculated for first generation migrants are slightly skewed as there are very few deaths of migrants aged 15 years or less. Since the average age of migrants arriving permanently in recent years has been around 27 years, using a life table starting at age 30 years and estimating mortality from that age onwards provides a more meaningful comparison.

LIFE EXPECTANCY OF MIGRANTS

The analysis shows that at age 30 years Australian-born residents generally had a lower life expectancy (men 47.4 years, women 52.5 years) than the overseas-born population (men 48.9 years, women 53.6 years). This suggests that migrants may have more favourable health than the Australian-born population.

Male and female life expectancy

Women generally experience a longer life expectancy than men. This was observed for all countries of birth that were included in this analysis.

Compared with the life expectancy at age 30 years for Australian-born men (47.4 years), higher life expectancies were observed for migrant men from Viet Nam (56.2 years), Korea (54.6 years), China (53.2 years), Philippines (52.9 years) and Sri Lanka (51.3 years).

Viet Nam-born women had the highest life expectancy at age 30 years. At 58.7 years it was marginally higher than women born in China (57.5 years), Philippines (56.3 years), Korea (56.0 years) and Sri Lanka (55.1 years). By comparison Australian-born women had a life expectancy of 52.5 years at age 30.

Men born in Fiji (46.6 years), Japan (47.2 years) and Papua New Guinea (47.4 years) had life expectancies at 30 years that were lower than Australian-born men. Women migrants from Fiji (48.7 years), Japan (50.3 years), Papua New Guinea (50.5 years), Hong Kong (51.6 years) and Indonesia (51.9 years) had lower life expectancies at age 30 years than Australian-born women.

Some of these differences (e.g. Japan and Hong Kong) are due to the small number of deaths on which the life tables are based (see the column on confidence intervals in table).

English proficiency

It is commonly assumed that those who do not speak English well tend to be disadvantaged in using Australian health services (VandenHeuvel 1999). While this analysis does not measure English proficiency, it was found that migrant men and women from non-English speaking countries, such as Viet Nam and China, had the highest life expectancies. Migrants from countries such as the United States of America, the United Kingdom and New Zealand had life expectancies, which were closer to the Australian-born population.

A comparison with the population of the country of birth

For selected countries the analysis showed the life expectancy of first generation migrants in Australia was generally higher than the life expectancy at age 30 years of the population in their country of birth. Japanese-born men (48.2 years) and women (54.5 years) and Singapore-born men (46.2 years) were the exceptions to this.

	MALES					FEMALES
	Deaths	Population		95%		Deaths	Population		95%
	1997-	June	eo	Confidence		1997-	June	eo	Confidence
	1999	1998	Age 30	interval(a)		1999	1998	Age 30	interval(a)
	no.	no.	years	years		no.	no.	years	years
Total Australia	202,052	9,319,897	47.9	(47.8-48.0)		182,602	9,410,462	52.8	(52.7-52.9)
Australian-born	141,391	7,125,758	47.4	(47.3-47.5)		134,620	7,238,286	52.5	(52.4-52.6)
Overseas-born	60,661	2,194,139	48.9	(48.8-49.1)		47,982	2,172,176	53.6	(53.4-53.7)
China	1,142	72,553	53.2	(52.3-54.1)		968	76,548	57.5	(56.6-58.4)
Fiji	249	18,209	46.6	(44.3-48.9)		220	20,680	48.7	(46.3-51.2)
Former USSR and the Baltic States	2,032	25,288	48.6	(47.4-49.8)		1,743	30,056	53.3	(52.3-54.4)
Former Yugoslavia	2,766	105,637	48.2	(47.5-48.9)		1,435	97,851	54.2	(53.4-55.0)
Germany	1,982	60,000	48.4	(47.5-49.2)		1,868	62,690	53.0	(52.1-53.8)
Hong Kong	136	26,882	48.7	(45.9-51.5)		122	28,374	51.6	(48.9-54.4)
India	840	50,314	50.7	(49.6-51.8)		785	44,945	53.7	(52.6-54.7)
Indonesia	293	28,531	49.6	(47.7-51.4)		259	28,267	51.9	(50.0-53.9)
Japan	67	9,257	47.2	(40.8-53.6)		91	12,824	50.3	(46.9-53.7)
Korea	117	18,826	54.6	(50.3-58.9)		87	19,519	56.0	(52.6-59.5)
Lebanon	588	40,401	49.0	(47.6-50.4)		355	36,754	52.8	(51.1-54.5)
New Zealand	2,460	175,260	48.7	(47.9-49.4)		1,908	167,445	53.1	(52.3-53.9)
Papua New Guinea	102	12,526	47.4	(43.7-51.0)		106	14,059	50.5	(47.1-53.9)
Philippines	274	41,698	52.9	(50.4-55.5)		341	72,606	56.3	(54.4-58.2)
Singapore	114	13,465	45.8	(42.5-49.2)		90	15,307	51.5	(48.0-55.0)
South Africa	419	33,846	51.1	(49.5-52.7)		432	34,560	54.8	(53.3-56.3)
Sri Lanka	369	28,055	51.3	(49.5-53.0)		330	27,185	55.1	(53.6-56.6)
United Kingdom	22,343	620,036	49.2	(49.0-49.5)		20,642	604,634	53.5	(53.3-53.8)
United States of America	517	33,124	48.6	(47.1-50.2)		285	29,002	52.7	(50.6-54.7)
Viet Nam	534	86,837	56.2	(54.2-58.2)		393	86,712	58.7	(57.0-60.4)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Further information on life expectancy of first generation migrants and deaths in general is available in Deaths, Australia, 2000 (Cat. no. 3302.0) released on 11 December 2001.

Reference

VandenHeuvel, A., Wooden, M. 1999 New Settlers Have Their Say: How immigrants fare over the early years of settlement. Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra.