Much Excitement about the Release of Census 2021 Data

Last week the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) commenced the release of data from the 10th August 2021 Australian Census. The ABS is the federal government department responsible for conducting the Census and analysing and publishing the results.

The Census is that principal tool that enables federal, state and local governments and community groups to plan the services needed by Australians.

Here are some quick facts that emerged in the 2021 Census:

• There were two million more people at home on Census night than in 2016. It’s hypothesised that this is due to COVID-19 restrictions in place across the nation on Census night.

• More than half a million Australians have served, or are currently serving, in the ADF. There are 84,865 current serving members and 496,276 former serving members. Less than one in seven of Australia’s former serving members are female, although the proportion is a bit higher at over one in five for current serving members.

• For the first time, the Census recorded more than a million one parent families, of which four out of every five of those parents were female. As a proportion of families, this is increasing slowly, from under 15 per cent (14.5 per cent) in 1996 to nearly 16 per cent (15.9 per cent) in 2021.

• In terms of marriage, 46.5 per cent of Australians over the age of 15 were in a registered marriage (9,665,708). Following the 2017 amendments to the Marriage Act 1961, which enabled marriage equality, nearly 25,000 same sex marriages (23,914) were counted in the 2021 Census.

• Within a very small margin, numbers of Millennials (25-39 years old) have caught up to Baby Boomers (55-74 years old) as the largest generational group in Australia. In the 1966 Census, nearly two in every five people were Baby Boomers.

• There were more than 800,000 (812,728) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on Census night, 3.2 per cent of the total people counted. This is an increase of over 25 per cent (25.2 per cent) since 2016.

• Over two million people reported having at least one of the following conditions: mental health problems (2,231,543), arthritis (2,150,396) or asthma (2,068,020), with these being the most reported long-term health conditions.

• Almost half of Australians have a parent born overseas (48.2 per cent) and the population continues to be drawn from around the globe, with 27.6 per cent reporting a birthplace overseas.

• Australia has welcomed more than one million people into Australia since 2017. The largest increase in country of birth, outside Australia, was India with 220,000 additional people counted. India has moved past China and New Zealand to become the third largest country of birth behind Australia and England.

• Christianity is the most common religion in Australia, with over 40 per cent of respondents identifying as Christian. This has reduced from over 50 per cent in 2016 and from over 60 per cent in 2011. As in earlier Censuses, the largest Christian denominations are Catholic (20.0 per cent of the population) and Anglican (9.8 per cent).

You can learn more about the results of the 2021 Census results by going to: Find Census data | Australian Bureau of Statistics (abs.gov.au)

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