31 Surprising Stats About Australia You Need To Know

As a property investor, it’s important to have a “macro” view of what’s going on in our country, as well as “micro” knowledge about your investment patch.

In particular, demographic trends (which shape the way we live and where we live) are important to understand, so I was fascinated to read 50 interesting statistics about Australia published by McKrindle, Australia’s social researchers.

Here are some of the ones I found the most thought-provoking:

1. If Australia was a city, at 23.5 million it would still only be the world’s 7th largest (after Tokyo, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Jakarta, Seoul and Delhi)
2. Western Australia grows by more people every 48 hours than Tasmania adds every year (500 people).

1. Tax rates might be rising but Australia’s death rate continues to decline and is at an all-time low.
2. Sydney is the state capital with the lowest probability of death (5.3 deaths per 1,000) while Darwin and Hobart have the highest capital city death rates (6.6).
3. Today’s baby boom is twice as large (exceeding 310,000 annual births) than when the original Baby Boom began in 1946 (less than 150,000 births).
4. Within a decade, couple only households (currently 30% of all households) will be Australia’s most common household type — more numerous than couple and kids households (currently 33%).
5. More than half of all households (54%) have at least 2 cars, and there are almost as many passenger vehicles (13.3 million) as there are adults in Australia!
6. The average street of 100 households has 10 babies (aged under 3), 27 cats and 45 dogs!
7. 1 in 10 households has a net worth exceeding $1.6 million, and 1% of households have wealth above $5 million.
8. In Australia there are almost 100,000 more women than men, with 6 out of our 8 states and territories experiencing a man drought.
   Victoria is the state with the highest ratio with females to males (98 males to every 100 females), with 58,399 more women than men.And on average, women in Australia outlive men by 4 years.
9. Australia grows 40% by natural increase and 60% by net overseas migration, and our growth rate (1.8%) is well above the world’s growth rate (1.1%).
10. Whilst approximately 1 in 5 (22%) Australians are Baby Boomers, they own over 50% of the nation’s private wealth.
11. Three decades ago the median age of an Australian was 30.5, today it is 37.3 and in 2044 it is projected to be 40.

1. Life expectancy at birth three decades ago was 76, today it is 82 and in 2044, it is projected to be more than 90.
2. The average Australian spends 10 hours and 19 minutes each day on screen time — and due to ‘multi-screening’ this is achieved in just under 8 hours of linear time.
3. By the time Generation Z (5–19-year-olds) begin to retire (beginning in 2063) the average annual earnings will exceed $222,000 while the median capital city house price will be $2.5 million.
4. If you lived on an average sized street in Australia comprised of 100 households, on that street there would be a marriage every 9 months, a death every 7 months and a birth every 14 weeks.
5. The average Australian stays with their employer just 3 years and 4 months — only a third of the way towards long service leave!If this plays out in the lifetime of a school leaver today it means they will have 17 separate employers in their lifetime across an estimated 5 different careers.
6. The year the queen came to the throne (1952), just 40 Australians turned 100. Last year, more than 2600 Australians turned 100.
7. Swimming costumes in Queensland are known as ‘togs’, in NSW ‘cossies’, but in Victoria, ‘bathers’, and while Victorians use the word ‘cantaloupe’, in the rest of the country the fruit is known as ‘rockmelon.’
8. Australia is currently growing by 1 million every 2 years — that’s one new Canberra per year, or a new Darwin every 14 weeks!
9. Even though Sydney has 400,000 more people than Melbourne, Melbourne has 58,568 more people who drive to work than Sydney.
   However, Melbourne has more bicycle commuters than any other city in Australia (25,594). In fact, 41% of all women who ride to work in Australia live in Melbourne.
10. Three decades ago almost 2 in 3 Australians were married while today less than half are, and the “never married” proportion of Australians has increased from 1 in 4 to 1 in 3.
11. Three decades ago the average full-time worker took home just under $19,000 per year in a time when the average house price was less than $150,000.

1. Today annual earnings exceed $73,000 with the average house price in most capital cities exceeding $520,000.
2. 1 in 4 Australians (24%) has a university degree but for Generation Y it is more than 1 in 3 and based on the current trends for Generation Z it is forecast that 1 in 2 will end up with a university degree.
3. There are more people in Sydney today than lived in all of Australia a century ago.
   In the last 100 years, Australia has only planted two new cities, Canberra (now our 8th largest) and the Gold Coast (now our 6th largest).
4. Australians have had 3 months of life expectancy added for every 12 months of time for each of the last 100 years.
5. A quarter of Australians (27%) were born overseas and almost half of Australian households (46%) had at least one parent born overseas.
6. More than half of the population state that they are about average in happiness, 29% say they are happier than average, and 17% are less happy than the average.
7. The average age of a first marriage is 29.8 for men and 28.1 for women and on average men first become a dad at 33 years of age while women have their first child at 30.7 years of age.

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Read more at McCrindle.

Originally published at Property Update.