Report shows decline in Australian life expectancy in 2022
Australia's life expectancy has fallen for the first time since the mid-1990s. The decline isn't much -- and a male and female born in 2020 to 2022 can still expect to live on average just over 81 years and 85 years respectively. But Australia’s population is ageing -- with more people living with a chronic disease and spending more time in ill health. Health economist -- Dr Martin Hensher says the COVID pandemic has had an impact in the decrease.
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00:00They're not big decreases, and they are much smaller decreases than we've seen in the rest
00:08of the world. But it's an important reminder that life expectancy can be impacted by other
00:17factors and sometimes can be forced down, or clearly in this case, largely due to the
00:22pandemic. COVID is very clearly the driver of this in Australia and elsewhere, both clearly
00:29direct COVID deaths, but also some of the sort of indirect impacts that COVID had. But
00:35yeah, COVID really has driven this. The fall in life expectancy is not itself because of
00:41the ageing population. In fact, obviously, if ageing means living longer, then obviously
00:46ageing and increasing life expectancy go together. It is true we have more older people, but
00:53it's not. In fact, this life expectancy fall is very directly because of the COVID impacts.
00:59But absolutely, most COVID deaths were among older people. That is true. In Australia still,
01:05the leading cause of death is cardiovascular disease. So that's really heart disease and
01:11strokes together. So that has been decreasing, but it's still out very clearly in number
01:17one as the main cause of death. And moving away from the life expectancy question, the
01:21very important figures they gave us about chronic conditions in this report, do unambiguously
01:29mean more people with more chronic conditions will lead to more demand on the healthcare
01:35system. And that really is going to lead to a need for more resources continuing over
01:41time. The key though, is we really have to get the right resources to give people the
01:47right care, firstly to prevent these chronic diseases in the first place, but then to really
01:52manage them well. And that means really investing particularly in primary care to give people
01:58the personalised, coordinated care that they need. And really just regarding investment
02:05in the healthcare system is an investment in people's health and being clear about the
02:10need to do that. Biologically, we know that individuals, some individuals can live well
02:15past 100. So there is a school of thought which said, you know, with ideal conditions,
02:22why couldn't life expectancy keep on going up? You know, to some point that there is
02:28probably is some natural limit, but we're not there yet. However, I think what's more
02:32important is that we know in some other countries, particularly the US, life expectancy actually
02:38fell for several years in a row before COVID. And that was really due to factors like economic
02:44inequality, drug overdoses and things. And life expectancy in the UK had been stagnating
02:52because of austerity and cuts in the health service and social care. So the real thing
02:57to focus on is that the choices we make have impacts on future life expectancy. And if
03:03we want to keep life expectancy increasing, we need to keep investing in keeping people
03:09healthier.