Australia’s youngest places

In the previous blog I looked at where the oldest median ages were in Australia. This article looks at the most youthful areas.

The youngest areas in Australia in 2011 were the Torres Strait Islands, with a median age of just 20 – that means that half the population is under 20.

The youngest areas of all are dominated by small indigenous councils in Queensland and the Northern Territory, including Torres Strait, Northern Cape York (20), Yarrabah (21) and Cherbourg (22). This is indicative of the young age structure and lower life expectancy of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population Australia-wide.

While we don’t have profiles for these areas, you can look at the young age structure of indigenous people on our profiles with an Indigenous Profile attached. This distribution for Cairns is a classic example. In fact there is not enough population aged 65+ among the indigenous community for us to split this group up further.

Outside of the indigenous areas, the areas with the youngest populations are those that house military training academies, such as Duntroon ACT (20), or universities, such as St Lucia QLD, (23).

Then we get to the inner city areas. Inner cities attract young adults, rather than young children, so their age structures are not quite as young as the indigenous communities with lots of kids, but they include Civic ACT (24) and Melbourne CBD (27).

This is a typical age profile of an inner city area (Central Sydney), where almost the entire population is aged between 20 and 35:

So in general, the youngest bits of Australia are a combination of remote indigenous communities, university and military campuses, and inner city areas which attract young people to jobs, education and entertainment.

Visit our demographic resource centre if you would like more information about the population characteristics of Australia. You may also wish to subscribe to our newsletter so that we can keep you updated on the latest demographic trends in Australia. For any enquiries about your demographic requirements, visit our website or drop us an email.