Australia’s has one of the world’s highest life expectancies and was relatively less impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic than other countries. However, Australia is also experiencing several concerning emerging mortality trends found in other English-speaking countries; these include slowing life expectancy increase, relatively high mortality among younger adults, high obesity prevalence and widening socio-economic inequalities. This seminar will explore these emerging trends and inequalities using Census-linked death registration data, with a particular focus on the use of multiple cause of death data to understand Australia’s unique mortality dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic and the role of multimorbidity and risk factors in mortality. It will discuss the findings in comparison to other English-speaking countries and widely relevant issues of quality of cause of death data.
Chair: Wen Su