How many deaths are there in Australia each year?
There’s more than enough news around at the moment to get you down, however, as demographers, we look to understand deaths and the death rate as an important part of the demographic story of any place.
In this blog, Glenn looks at what is ‘normal’ for the death rate in Australia, as we all try to understand the magnitude of COVID-19’s impact. And while the virus continues to be a threat we must take seriously, it’s uplifting to remember that, as a society, our life expectancy continues to increase, and the drastic measures we’ve taken so far to arrest the spread of COVID-19 mean we’re unlikely to see the virus cause a significant demographic event (at least in terms of deaths – migration is a very different story) in this country.
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The current COVID-19 pandemic is generating some grim statistics and predictions on the number of deaths associated with the disease. There are some awful figures coming from some countries on the number of people dying per day. While it looks like Australia’s efforts to slow the virus via social distancing are having a significant successful impact, early estimates of potential Australian deaths from the coronavirus were in the order of 50,000 to 150,000, based on a 1% death rate.
While it’s not a nice topic, it’s pretty important to put this in context. We have good information on how many people die each year in Australia, so in this blog I’ll have a look at these numbers and the main causes of death.
Where does information about deaths come from?
The ABS puts out two publications each year looking at deaths.
Deaths, Australia (3302.0) looks at the numbers of deaths by various demographic characteristics and death rates.
Causes of Death, Australia (3303.0) looks at the causes of death in a bit of detail. The current data on both of these is from the 2018 calendar year (year of registration).
Headline Figures
The 2018 calendar year saw 158,493 deaths registered in Australia, at a rate of 5.1 per 1,000 population (based on a standardised age distribution which allows comparison between populations of different age structures).
This was an increase of about 15,000 deaths per year on 2008 numbers (10 year comparison), but that’s due to higher population – the death rate fell from 6.1 to 5.1 in that time period. As per my previous blog, life expectancy has been generally increasing in Australia, so death rates have gone down in most age groups over a decade.
The deaths number is a really important input into our population forecasts. ‘Births minus deaths’ is ‘Natural increase’ – the amount that population would grow in the absence of any overseas migration. There are generally in Australia around twice the number of births as deaths, so our population continues to grow in this regard. This typically makes up somewhere around 35-40% of Australia’s total population growth.
This also dispells one of the myths around population growth – that Australia’s population would be falling if not for overseas migration (like Japan’s is now). This would eventually happen due to ageing population, but it would take around 25-30 years for that to occur based on the current numbers (notwithstanding potential one-off events like COVID-19).
Year | Births | Deaths | Natural Increase | Total Population Growth | % natural increase |
2018 | 315,147 | 158,493 | 156,654 | 395,841 | 39.6% |
2017 | 309,142 | 160,909 | 148,233 | 405,621 | 36.5% |
2016 | 311,104 | 158,504 | 152,600 | 374,912 | 40.7% |
2015 | 305,377 | 159,052 | 146,325 | 340,309 | 43.0% |
2014 | 299,697 | 153,580 | 146,117 | 347,557 | 42.0% |
What are the main causes of death in Australia?
This is probably deserving of a blog in itself, but in 2018, the main causes of death were
- Heart disease (17,533)
- Altzheimers and dementia (13,963)
- Cerebro-vascular diseases, eg. stroke (9,976), and
- Cancers of the lungs (8,586)
Note that Cancer is the biggest killer when you combine them (about 46,000 deaths combined) – but the causes of death publication splits cancers into a number of different categories, while Heart Disease is split into fewer categories.
Check the median age column of these death figures in the publication as well. All the main causes of death have a median age over 70, most over 80, indicating that you are far more likely to die at older ages from the vast majority of causes. The one major outlier here is “Intentional Self-Harm”, the medical term for what is commonly known by its legal name – Suicide – with a median age of 44, and 3,046 deaths in 2018. It is the number 1 cause of death for all people aged 15-44.
Of particular interest in the Coronavirus pandemic are two categories –
Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases – 7,889 deaths – these are things like Asthma, Emphysema and Bronchitis – these are known to be strong co-morbidities with COVID-19, so people with these illnesses are highly vulnerable in the pandemic. But these diseases already kill a lot of people each year in Australia themselves.
Influenza and Pneumonia – 3,102 deaths – My understanding (and I am not an infectious disease expert!) is that many coronavirus deaths are the result of a complication which develops, often Pneumonia or a related condition. In 2018 over 90% of these 3,102 deaths were from Pneumonia, with only about 200 deaths from seasonal influenza. If deaths from COVID-19 pick up, it’s quite likely that many will be classified into this category.
What impact will Coronavirus have on the number of deaths in Australia?
The short answer is that “no-one knows for sure”. We are seeing some horrendous numbers coming out of Italy, Spain, the UK and the USA at the time of writing, with 1000+ deaths per day in some of these places (remembering, of course, the populations of these nations are much larger than Australia).
The initial ‘worst case’ modelling, which was done in March, suggested 50,000-150,000 deaths from the virus in Australia. If this happened in the next year it would potentially see an increase of 30% to 100% in the deaths numbers for the year, which is enormous. Doubling the number of deaths would bring it to 300,000 for a year, which is around the same as the number of births, and therefore would wipe out natural increase in population for the year. But even in this worst case, it’s probably unlikely to actually have this effect on the deaths numbers. That’s because it’s known that Covid-19 disproportionately kills the elderly and those with chronic illnesses already. While tragic, it can’t be assumed that you just add those deaths numbers to the total, as some of those would have been in the mortality rate anyway, which, as we’ve seen above, is significant from these diseases on their own.
What it does look like is that Australia’s implementation of strict social distancing, contact testing and tracing has reduced the number of cases substantially. It seems unlikely at the moment that the worst case is going to happen, or anything close to it. Our low population density may also be having an impact. The number of deaths at the time of writing (April 17th) stands at 63 people. While each death is a tragedy, this number is not enough to make even a blip in the total deaths numbers for the year. Of course, this may still increase substantially, but even if it were to increase 100-fold, this is only a 3-4% increase in deaths expected for the year. This is the impact of the popular concept of “flattening the curve” in relation to the worst-case scenario.
If Australia continues on this trajectory, it would appear that Coronavirus won’t have a big impact on the number of deaths in Australia (in the context of overall demographic patterns in the population). There is, however, a bigger impact on population growth. About 60% of Australia’s population growth comes from overseas migration, and we have closed our borders. It’s likely that overseas migration will be substantially lower in the next year, and this could be a much bigger impact on the total population than deaths or births.
We’re here to help you understand the impact of Covid-19 on your community
Just a reminder that we are here to help you through the current crisis. There is a lot of population information in our community profiles and social atlases for local areas. For our partners in local government, we’re here to support you by finding other data sources and doing data modelling to help you understand the impact in your area. If you need assistance, get in touch with us here and tell us what you’re working on.
If this topic raises any issues for you
As demographers, this is a subject we consider closely, however, we appreciate it’s not something everyone is comfortable discussing. If you or anyone you know needs help, we’d encourage you to get in touch with one of these services:
- Lifeline on 13 11 14
- Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800
- MensLine Australia on 1300 789 978
- Beyond Blue on 1300 22 46 36
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A cynical person might think the original mortality numbers for Australia were deliberately inflated by so called health experts/ authorities to ensure they could not lose. Terrified politicians had no choice but to fall in line and the economy was sacrificed at the altar of Covid 19. A bit of a catch 22 “You know, that might be the answer – to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail.”
“suggested 50,000-150,000 deaths from the virus in Australia. If this happened in the next year it would potentially see an increase of 30% to 100%”
This line here is what is wrong with the response to covid-19. There are two horrific errors – one, obviously the count is just way, way off. I don’t need to go into much depth here. Two, which is the insidious error, is that we constantly portray Covid deaths as being additional deaths, when looking at countries like Sweden demonstrates there has been very little net excess mortality after they’ve burnt through the first (only?) wave of the pandemic. Covid deaths are being over-reported – deaths with covid, not due to – and a vast majority of these deaths are deaths that would happen in the course of the year anyway, just with a severe forward-harvesting of the season due to the lack of immunity to slow the spread.
It’s August now, and in the wake of Melbourne’s authoritarian dictatorship, what are the numbers looking like? Every day I see “highest number of deaths recorded!”, then read the article to see them mentioning people from ages 80 to 100. How is this and different to any other years’ winter burden? You should also check out Denis Rancourt’s recent paper that goes through all-cause mortality.
Speaking with a Funeral Director about Winter deaths in the aged, he said most people live in an air conditioned environment and Winter numbers of deaths were now about average across the whole year.
The question remains unanswered: Why are the deaths being over reported?
I’m also trying to find raw figures of covid deaths above and beyond so called average death rates
It would be great if we could have an update to Your great article about usual deaths in Australia each year among the over 70 s age group … and the comparison with the pandemic.. because you wrote the stats in April 2020 it would be good to see what it looks like now in September! The figures are difficult to compare because leaders didn’t do herd immunity to know what that would look like if we had gone that way, we can only compare with how it looks in other countries! Alan Jones and Tony Abbot are putting a cost the nation on the small number of deaths, which is not of course allowing for bigger numbers if we had not had lock downs. Between a rock and hard place!
What it does look like is that Australia’s implementation of strict social distancing, contact testing and tracing has reduced the number of cases substantially. It seems unlikely at the moment that the worst case is going to happen, or anything close to it. Our low population density may also be having an impact. The number of deaths at the time of writing (April 17th) stands at 63 people. While each death is a tragedy, this number is not enough to make even a blip in the total deaths numbers for the year. Of course, this may still increase substantially, but even if it were to increase 100-fold, this is only a 3-4% increase in deaths expected for the year. This is the impact of the popular concept of “flattening the curve” in relation to the worst-case scenario.
Victoria had 40,800 deaths in 2018, an average of 111 per day, every day yet out so called leader stands and tells us how many people died OF Covid19. A report on Saturday the 12th of August on Channel 10 news said that deaths in aged care are actually down buy about 1,000 on the same time last year. We are being terrified for purely political purposes.
The cold hearted leaders in Queensland are the worst and unfortunately the majority of Queenslanders actually believe in what she is doing. This whole episode is bringing death to humanity and the end of people being cordial.
Really is time that our constitution is looked at and any laws allowing this to happen are revoked.
Aus population 26 million. Deaths in Aus in next 100 yrs.26 million. ÷ by 100 yrs =260,000 per yr ÷ by 52 weeks = 5000 per week. How come our records show approx 100.000 less per yr.
Hi Ray – thanks for the comment. That’s a good illustration of how you can’t just assume current population = deaths in the future. Yes, pretty much everyone who is alive now is likely to be dead in 100 years (barring major advances in medical science, which is not out of the question). But each age group has an age-specific death rate and it’s highly age dependent. i.e. the older you are, the more likely you are to die in any given year. Current deaths are a reflection not of the current population, but of the population born many years ago – most people live to over 75, and the population 75 years ago was much smaller, only around 8 million – less than a third of the current total. A large share of that 26 million was born recently or immigrated recently aged in their 20s, so potentially have 50-60 years of life left. While we may reach 260,000 deaths a year in less than 100 years from now, you can’t evenly spread the deaths expected in that time over each year. That’s why we use age-specific death rates in forecasting.