Insights into Australia’s Population by Regions

Amanda Ward, Commonwealth Treasury
Michael Bathgate, Commonwealth Treasury

This poster provides insights into Australia’s population, broken down into six geographic regions – capital cities, coastal cities, inland cities, remote areas, coastal country and inland country. It explores and compares Australia’s population characteristics including age and socioeconomic distribution, and examines recent and historical population growth and its drivers across the regions. Population growth is broken down into components – natural increase (births minus deaths), net overseas migration and net internal migration. While there is wide variation by individual regions, aggregate cities and remote areas have a younger population and therefore, receive a greater contribution of natural increase to their population growth. Cities also tend to have more growth from net overseas migration, while net internal migration tends to flow to coastal cities and country areas. This poster uses regional population and Greater Capital City Statistical Areas (GCCSA) data by age and sex from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) for its data and geospatial analysis. Regions are defined using the Bureau of Communications, Arts and Regional Research (BCARR) geographical classifications, which groups areas together based on their geographical location and population size. This has allowed for aggregation of the ABS’ detailed small area data.

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