SHOCKFACTS: Indigenous health and welfare

• Indigenous households earn about $200 less than other households per week, or 62% of the average household income.

• Indigenous people are half as likely to have completed their schooling and only about 40% are employed, compared to 60% in the wider population.

*Indigenous females are 28 times more likely than other women and girls to be admitted to hospital due to assault.

• The Aboriginal female death rate from assault is between seven and 13 times greater (depending on the age group) than for non-Aboriginal women, while the male rate is six to 22 times higher.

• Aboriginal people live on average 20 years less than their fellow Australians. Indigenous males live on average to just 56 years of age and females to 63.

• 43% of the juveniles in detention are Indigenous and the Aboriginal diabetes rate is 11% compared to 3% for others.

[Sources: The Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare and the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University.]

From Green Left Weekly, July 7, 2004.

Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

From GLW issue 588