Australian life expectancy jumps to new highs

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/12/australian-life-expectancy-jumps-to-new-highs

Version 0 of 1.

Australians born now are expected to live longer than ever before.Life expectancy for females at birth rose from 84.3 in 2013 to 84.4 last year, while for males it jumped from 80.1 to 80.3, according to new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

There are only six other countries in the world where both men and women have a life expectancy over 80 years, Beidar Cho from the ABS said in a statement on Thursday.

Those countries are Japan, Italy, Switzerland, Iceland, Israel and Sweden.

“Australia has a higher life expectancy, at both the male and female level, than many similar countries to ours such as New Zealand, the UK and the US,” she said.

The ACT had the highest life expectancy for both sexes, while the Northern Territory had the lowest.

Registered deaths numbers also hit historic highs in 2014. A total of 153,580 people died last year, up 4% on 2013. That’s indicative of Australia’s growing ageing population, according to the ABS.

Infant deaths per 1,000 births were down to 3.4 in 2014 from 3.6 in 2013.