An enhanced mortality database for estimating indigenous life expectancy: A feasibility study

 

The aim of an enhanced mortality database for estimating Indigenous life expectancy, a feasibility study is to improve reporting of information on Indigenous deaths by linking death registrations data with several additional data sets that contain information on Indigenous deaths. Linkage of registered deaths data to the additional data sets identified 10.2 per cent more deaths that were not identified as Indigenous on the registered deaths data set. The enhanced data also showed that expectation of life at birth for Indigenous Australians over the period 2001-2006 was 66.6 years for males and 72.7 years for females. This report shows that data linkage is an effective tool for improving estimates of mortality and life expectancy for Indigenous Australians.