All the hoopla over gender equality curiously fails to ever mention that Australian women live on average four years longer than Australian males. From The ABS:
Life expectancy at birth estimates represent the average number of years that a newborn baby could expect to live, assuming current age-specific death rates are experienced through his/her lifetime. In 2015-2017, life expectancy at birth was 80.5 years for males and 84.6 years for females (see graph 1.1). In the past 10 years, life expectancy has increased by 1.5 years for males and 0.9 years for females. The increase in life expectancy at birth reflects declining death rates at most ages…
In 2015-2017, Victoria had the highest life expectancy at birth of all states and territories for males (81.3 years) and the Australian Capital Territory for females (85.2 years). Life expectancy at birth was lowest in the Northern Territory at 75.9 years for males and 79.4 years for females. These were 4.6 years and 5.2 years lower than the life expectancies for Australian males and females respectively…
Regardless, Australia has one of the longest life expectancies in the world, ranking sixth overall, third for males and eighth for females:
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
