Aboriginal population in Australia

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Aboriginal population figures

Experts estimate the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders at 700,000 at the time of the invasion in 1788 [3]. It fell to its low of around 93,000 people in 1900, a decrease by almost 87%.

It will take until 2021 for population figures to recover. If the current annual growth rate of 2.2% remains stable Aboriginal people can be as many as 721,000 by 2021 [3].

A problem is though how many people identify themselves as Aboriginal. “There are a large number of people who don’t answer the Indigenous question in the Census,” explains Patrick Corr, Director of Demography with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) [4].

“We have approximately 1.1 million people whose Indigenous status we don’t know, so we have made some assumptions.” This uncertainty lets the ABS tag some figures as ‘experimental estimates’.

Were Aboriginal people live

Contrary to what many people think (and to the stereotype of Australian advertising) the majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people live in Australia’s eastern states and not in the remote desert regions of the continent [1].

63% of Aboriginal people live in NSW, Queensland and Victoria while Western Australia and the Northern Territory contribute only 28% of the Aboriginal population. Queensland is expected to overtake NSW for the title of most Aboriginal residents [3].

The population is the lowest in South Australia (5%) and Tasmania (3.3%). The Australian Capital Territory is home to only 0.8% of Australia’s Aboriginal people.

The Northern Territory has the largest proportion of its population who are Aboriginal (32%), compared with 4% or less for all other states and the Australian Capital Territory.

90% of Aboriginal people live in areas covering 25% of Australia, while 90% of non-Aboriginal people live in the most densely populated 2.6% of the continent [6]. (Compare this to who owns how much of the land!)

Age

The 2006 census showed that the Aboriginal population is relatively young. The median age is 20 years, compared with 37 years for non-Aboriginal people [2]. 65% of the Aboriginal community is less than 30 years old, compared with 39% of non-Aboriginal people [5]. The Aboriginal birth rate is 25% higher than that of all of Australia.

Just 3% of the Aboriginal population are over 65 years old, while 13% of non-Aboriginal Australians are in that age bracket. For 2021 the median age is expected to increase to 24 years [3], and the elderly population to double.

Origin

90% of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population identified themselves as Aboriginal people (coming from mainland Australia), 6% as Torres Strait Islanders (far North Queensland) and 4% of both origins [2].

Human Development Index

The United Nations use a way of measuring and comparing the development of countries by combining indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment and income into a composite human development index, the HDI.

The UN publishes the HDI annually since 1990. While the result looks very good for Australia, it’s a very different story when considering Aboriginal people separately [7].