Second-oldest nation

A report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) indicates that as people are living longer, they are requiring greater support in the last years of their lives.

The Australia’s health 2008 report showed that at 81.4 years, Australians have the second highest average life expectancy in the world behind Japan.

It is not just because more people are reaching old age – older people are living longer.

Australian men who reach the age of 65 can now expect to live to 83 and older women are likely to live to 86 – six years more than the equivalent cohort 100 years ago.

But the report also found that the increased longevity is being accompanied by higher levels of disability severe or profound core activity limitation.

In the 15 years between 1988 and 2003, life expectancy among Australians increased by one-and-a-half years, an extra year – or two thirds of that gain – was spent with a disability.

The same analysis found that older women lived an average of 1.2 years longer but they spent 90 per cent of that ‘extra’ time with a disability.

The findings come less than two weeks after the AIHW published a statistical overview of aged care which found that people are entering residential aged care at an older age where they are staying longer than ever before.

The majority of Australians over the age of 65 consider themselves to be in good health or better, although the proportion reporting fair or poor health increases with age.