Life expectancy at birth in Victoria 1997-2001 - Victorian Government Health Information, Australia

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Life expectancy at birth: Victoria 1997-2001

Page content: Introduction | Summary of findings | Maps | Download documents

Introduction

Life expectancy at birth for all Victorians continues to rise. Whether measured for Victoria as a whole, or the smallest Victorian Local Government Area, there is improvement all around.

The rate of improvement varies between men and women, between rural and metropolitan areas, and between well-off areas and less well-off areas.

Details of the spread in life expectancy results across the state are presented in the maps, charts and tables provided.

Summary of findings

The main points of interest are summarised below:

Over the period 1997-2001, on average, a male child born could expect to live 77.4 years while a female could expect to live 82.7 years.
Compared to the previous 5 year period, male life expectancy rose by 1.8 years while female life expectancy improved by 1.3 years.
Manningham (80.6) is the local government area (LGA) with the highest male life expectancy; Nillumbik (84.9) has the highest female life expectancy.
The gap between highest and lowest male life expectancy among LGAs is 6 years (Manningham 80.6 and Maribyrnong 74.8). The gap between highest and lowest female life expectancy in LGAs is 5 years (Nillumbik 84.9 and Melton 80.2).
The gap between highest and lowest male life expectancy in LGAs, has reduced over the period 1992-1996 and 1997-2001 from 6.9 to 5.8 years, while for females the gap has widened from 4.0 to 4.7 years.
Twelve LGAs have higher than state average male life expectancy, while thirty-two LGAs have lower. Eleven LGAs have higher than state average, female life expectancy while ten LGAs have lower.
The lower than average LGAs are mostly located in rural Victoria, with the exceptions being Melton, Port Phillip and Yarra for females, and Frankston, Gr. Dandenong, Darebin, Maribyrnong, Port Phillip, Wyndham and Yarra for males.
Overall rural Victoria has lower than state average life expectancy for both males and females, (76.4 and 82.1 respectively) while the metropolitan area has higher than state average life expectancy (males 77.9 and females 83.0).
The Rural/Metro gap has remained fairly constant at 1 to 1.5 years over the past 5 years.
The change in life expectancy in rural LGAs is less likely to be statistically significant, due to their smaller population size and hence wider confidence intervals around the estimates.