Indigenous child death rate falling: COAG

June 29th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

The proportion of indigenous children dying each year is falling, but remains double the rate of other Australians.

The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) on Friday reported on progress made in reducing the health, education and employment disadvantages felt by indigenous Australians.

The 83-page report found some progress had been made in areas like reducing high indigenous death rates and school retention rates, but in other areas little progress had been made or things had gotten worse.

The report said the indigenous child death rate decreased from 252 per 100,000 children in 1998, to 202 per 100,000 in 2010.

Although it was a large drop, the level was still more than double the death rate for non-indigenous children, which stood at 95 per 100,000.

Death rates of indigenous people were studied in NSW, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

The report said that across those jurisdictions the death rate of indigenous people stood at 1133.2 per 100,000, which was nearly twice that of non-indigenous Australians.

Despite the high level, between 1998 and 2010 it fell significantly in Queensland and the Northern Territory, and was fairly stable in NSW and SA.

If current trends continue only the Northern Territory will meet the aim of closing the gap between indigenous and other Australians by 2031, COAG found.

The report said that in 2005-07 the life expectancy for an indigenous male was 67.2 years, and 72.9 for an indigenous female, a gap of 11.5 year and 9.7 years respectively.

New figures on life expectancy were not yet available but would be reported in COAG’s next report, the organisation said.

In 2010 the retention rate of students to year 10 was 95.8 per cent for indigenous students, a jump of 5.3 per cent since 2007, and 47.2 per cent of indigenous people continued studying to year 12.

Despite being a 4.3 per cent lift on 2007 figures, the year 12 figure was 32.2 per cent behind non-indigenous people.

Higher retention rates have not meant better school attendance though.

School attendance rates for indigenous students in year 10 got worse in every state and territory between 2007 and 2010.

The report also said that 10.9 per cent of babies born to indigenous mothers were of low birth weight in 2009, an improvement on the 11.2 per cent two years earlier, but far higher than the 4.5 per cent figure born to non-indigenous mothers.