Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0019/00198.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 22KB | 361 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00198}
$Pretitle{369}
$Title{Australia
Chapter 3C.   Population}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Donald P. Whitaker}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{percent
population
australia
immigrants
labor
immigration
years
increase
proportion
women}
$Date{1974}
$Log{Figure 7.*0019801.scf
Table 3.*0019801.tab
Table 4.*0019802.tab
Table 5.*0019803.tab
Table 6.*0019804.tab
}
Country:     Australia
Book:        Australia, A Country Study
Author:      Donald P. Whitaker
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1974

Chapter 3C.   Population

     According to the census taken in June 1971, the total population was
12,755,638; it was estimated to have increased to over 13.1 million by
mid-1973. With four persons to a square mile in the early 1970s, Australia was
the least populated of the world's large countries. The 1971 census indicated
an average annual growth rate of 1.93 percent over the preceding ten years,
continuing a gradual decline from a high of 2.54 percent during the immediate
post-World War II years. The projected population for the year 2000 was
approximately 21 million.

     The 1971 figure included 106,288 people who considered themselves
Aboriginals; this was the first time that Aboriginals were counted in the
official national census. Although special counts had been made
periodically-the most thorough in 1966-Aboriginals had previously been
excluded from national census figures under Section 127 of the constitution,
and their numbers were therefore not reflected in such arrangements as fiscal
and electoral provisions. This section of the constitution was repealed in
1967. The 1971 census also included 9,663 Torres Strait Islanders.

Population Structure

     The population was fairly young-the group under the age of twenty
constituted 37.5 percent of the population-reflecting the results of the
higher growth rates of the post-World War II baby boom and the youthful age of
the majority of the immigrants. In general, however, the population profile
was that of a developed country. About 28.8 percent of the total were in the
age-group under fifteen years, 62.9 percent were fifteen to sixty-four years
of age, and 8.3 percent were sixty-five years and over. The twenty- to
thirty-nine-year group and the forty- to sixty-four-year group were about
equal in number (28 percent and 26.2 percent, respectively). The average age
of the population continued the gradual increase apparent since federation in
1911; the proportion of the population over forty grew while that under forty
decreased (see fig. 7).

[See Figure 7.: Australian Population Pyramids, 1954 and 1971 Source: Adapted
from United Nations Demographic Yearbook, New York, 1970, pp. 378-379; and
Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1972 (No. 58), Canberra,
1972, p. 1056.]

     Relatively equal sex distribution was achieved for the first time in 1947
and was maintained in spite of the rapid increase in immigration after World
War II. This was a marked change from a previously masculine, immigrant, and
pioneering society. The 1971 ratio of 101.1 males to 100 females compared with
that of 110.5 males to 100 females at the beginning of the twentieth century;
even higher rates existed in the nineteenth century (see ch. 2). This change
reflected both the decline in the proportion of immigrants in the total
population and the increase in female immigrants. Higher ratios of males to
females still prevail, however, in the overseas-born population and in the
Northern Territory and Western Australia, both considered frontier areas.

     Immigration is one of the most important aspects of Australia's
demography. Immigrants were first outnumbered by native-born Australians only
in 1870. The proportion of the population born outside Australia fell
gradually after that. In 1901 the overseas-born constituted 23 percent of the
total population and in 1947, 10 percent. In 1971, however, after more than
two decades of substantial immigration, the proportion had risen to almost 20
percent. The 1971 census listed 2,520,148 people born outside Australia;
almost three-fourths of the overseas-born population reported that they had
lived in Australia for five years or longer.

     By the early 1970s the Aboriginal population, including an estimated
40,000 full bloods, was increasing at a slightly higher rate than the rest of
the population. It is generally agreed that Aboriginals numbered some 300,000
at the time Europeans arrived on the continent. After a century of disease,
warfare, and deprivation that accompanied European settlement, their numbers
were reduced to roughly 40,000 at the beginning of the twentieth century, and
it was then widely assumed that they would simply die out. In 1971
approximately 90 percent of the Aboriginal population was distributed in
roughly commensurate numbers among Queensland, Western Australia, New South
Wales, and the Northern Territory, where they made up over one-quarter of the
territorial population.

     The geographical distribution of the population is extremely uneven, a
reflection of environmental influences. About 80 percent of the continent is
very thinly populated, having an average of less than one person per square
mile. An arc of moderate density extends along the eastern and southeastern
seaboard from southern Queensland to eastern South Australia; the principal
concentration is between Newcastle, 100 miles north of Sydney, and Geelong, to
the west of Melbourne. Inland from this arc, moderate densities are also found
in several east coast valleys in Queensland, in the southeast, and in the
southwest coastal area of Western Australia. Victoria had the highest density
of any state, an average of forty persons per square mile; Tasmania and New
South Wales had an average of about fifteen; and South Australia and
Queensland averaged about three. Western Australia averaged one person per
square mile, and the Northern Territory was so thinly peopled that it had less
than one person per six square miles. In 1971 the Australian Capital Territory
had an average of 153 persons per square mile, a reflection of its specialized
role as the site of the federal capital (see table 3).

[See Table 3.: Australia, State and Continental Territorial Area and
Population, 1971]

     The 1971 census showed that approximately 85.6 percent of the population
lived in urban centers; roughly 14.3 percent was rural. The proportion varied
somewhat from state to state, but only Queensland (20.4 percent), Tasmania
(26.5 percent), and the Northern Territory (35.2 percent) had substantially
higher rural percentages. The degree of urbanization, moreover, increased
between 1961 and 1971. The proportion of the population living in cities of
500,000 or more increased from 49.7 percent to 57.9 percent, and the number of
such cities grew from four to five. The proportion of the population in
smaller cities and towns remained stable at around 25 percent from 1954 to
1971. Although the number of small towns with populations below 10,000
increased slightly during the decade up to 1971, they tended to lose most of
their natural increase to larger towns of between 15,000 and 20,000 and to a
handful of small cities of between 50,000 and 75,000. The pattern of
population concentration in large cities may be somewhat altered through
efforts at state and federal levels to build up other regional urban centers.

     With few interior resources requiring large labor reserves for their
development, Australia has experienced internal migration primarily in the
form of a gradual population movement from rural to urban areas. Between 1961
and 1971 the rural population declined in absolute numbers and as a proportion
of the total population, losing all of its natural increase. This drift and
the related movement out of agricultural occupations was not as pronounced as
that in other developed countries. Nevertheless, the trend showed every sign
of continuing.

Population Dynamics

     Census counts have been taken