Tasmania's population change

Box 1: Tasmania's Population Size and Growth
Tasmania's population has grown slowly over most of its history. Small declines in size were experienced during the early part of the century, and again between 1996 and 2000. Since 2000, growth has resumed....[more]

Box 2: Components of Population Change
At first sight, the accompanying graph looks complex. However, closer examination reveals that it depicts just three factors - natural increase (the pink columns), net migration (the green columns), and net change (the blue line with white spots)....[more]

Box 3: Births and Deaths - on an overall collision course
Historically, Tasmania has experienced slightly higher birth rates (per woman) than most of Australia's States and Territories. Like the rest of Australia, Tasmania also experienced a baby boom between 1946 and 1965, and a steady decline in the birth...[more]

Box 4: Natural Increase - noisy but declining overall
With births and deaths trending towards convergence, the natural increase component of Tasmania's population change is 'noisy' but also trending down. The accompanying graph shows changes to Tasmania's natural increase since 1981. Notably, the curren...[more]

Box 5: Tasmania's Experience of Migration
This graph shows net interstate migration (the purple columns) and net overseas migration (the orange columns), and the outcome of the difference between these two - net migration (the blue line). Clearly, of the two, interstate migration has been Ta...[more]

Box 5a: Tasmania's migrants by age
Tasmania tends to gain older migrants and lose younger ones. As the accompanying graph for interstate migration shows, this pattern occurs even when net migration is strongly positive, as occurred during the 2003-2004 period when the state received a...[more]

Box 6: Tasmania's age-sex structure
A population's age-sex structure is the number and/or proportion of the population to be found in each age-sex group. If each population could be got together for the day and lined up in their age groups - females on one side, males on the other, a p...[more]

Box 8: How are we going?
The accompanying graph shows Tasmania's 'estimated resident population' across the past 14 years, and the most recent set of ABS projections for the next ten years, according to the assumptions in Series A, B and C ('high', 'medium' and 'low'). A...[more]

Box 9: Structural Ageing
The accompanying graph shows projected change by age between 2005 and 2015, according to the ABS high (Series A) and medium (Series B) variant assumptions. Of all illustrations of population ageing I find this the most profound. Even if Tasmania expe...[more]

Box 10: Pre- and Early Primary School Age Groups
Declining numbers of births, along with recent net migration losses of young adults in the key family formation age groups (18-38 years), is causing Tasmania to experience a significant decline in the numbers of pre- and early primary school age chil...[more]

Box 11: Snr primary and high school age population
Numbers at 10-14 and 15-19 years are similarly projected to continue their downward trend, irrespective of which set of ABS projections are used....[more]

Box 12:University and early working age population
While numbers at 20-24 and 25-29 years have been declining for some years, both sets of ABS projections indicate a general steadying off in this trend (even a rise in numbers at 25-29 years). While this change would be very welcome, especially for th...[more]

Box 13: Labour Market Entrants to Exits
As the population age structure changes from young to old, so too does the ratio of people at the prime labour market entrant ages (e.g. 15-24 years)to those approaching retriement age (e.g. 55-64 years). The accompanying graph shows how in Tasma...[more]

Box 14: Labour Market Entry/Exit Ratios
The accompanying graph shows the outcome of the changing numbers of labour market entrants to exits depicted in Box 13 above; here we see the ratio of the two, which is currently just on 1.1 (or 11 entrants for every ten exits), having fallen from 2....[more]

Box 15: The Working Age Population
The working age population is typically taken to be the population aged 15-64 years, even though relatively few people at the lower and upper bounds of this age group are - these days - actually in the labour force. The graph shows the growth and lev...[more]

Box 16: Numerical Ageing
The accompanying figure illustrates 'numerical ageing' - the absolute increase in the number of elderly - shown here in terms of the annual increment at age 65+. These numbers are now rising rapidly. In the year 2005, Tasmania will have around 1,500 ...[more]

Box 17: Tasmania's Seniors
Conventionally, the 'seniors' population is comprised of those aged 65 years and over. In Tasmania, as elsewhere, this population will undergo enormous growth over the next several decades, both numerically and as a proportion of the total population...[more]