Events

Australian life expectancy trends and inequalities: An outlier among English-speaking countries?

  • 13 Oct 2025

    14:00-15:30, Redwood Meeting Room, The Malthouse, Tidmarsh Lane, Oxford

  • Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science Seminar   Add to Calendar
Speaker: Timothy Adair

Melbourne School of Population and Global Health

This event is part of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science's seminar series

Abstract:

Australia has one of the world’s highest life expectancies and was relatively less impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic than other countries. However, Australia is also experiencing several concerning emerging mortality trends found in other English-speaking countries; these include slowing life expectancy increase, relatively high mortality among younger adults, high obesity prevalence and widening socio-economic inequalities. This seminar will explore these emerging trends and inequalities using Census-linked death registration data, with a particular focus on the use of multiple cause of death data to understand Australia’s unique mortality dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic and the role of multimorbidity and risk factors in mortality. It will discuss the findings in comparison to other English-speaking countries and widely relevant issues of quality of cause of death data.

Chair: Wen Su