Overall deaths increasing, but the rate of death is declining.

Understanding the death rate is very important in population forecasting. It’s not the brightest subject but it’s a fact of life that we all die eventually.  One aspect of progress can be seen as a lowering of the death rate, and an increase in the age at which we die (related to life expectancy). The number of deaths in an area forms part of the “natural change” component of population change which last year comprised 25% of Australia’s population growth. Most areas retain positive natural change with more births than deaths. But areas with an elderly population will often record more deaths than births, and would naturally decline in population without migration. In countries like Japan this has become the norm, but not in most parts of Australia where we have a younger (but ageing) population. Understanding this dynamic is very important to be able to accurately forecast the population.

In late September, new data were released by ABS showing the number and rate of deaths Australia-wide and broken down by region. In calendar year 2024, there were 187,268 deaths recorded in Australia, an increase of 4,137 from the previous year, and over 34,000 more than 10 years prior. The Crude death rate was 6.884 per 1,000 people – that’s just the number of deaths per 1,000 population. It increased a little from 6.542 ten years before. But that’s just due to ageing population.

A better measure of death rate is the Standardised death rate (SDR) which adjusts for different age structures to what the death rate would be in a population with a standard age structure (the actual population used currently is from the age structure back in 2001, but it doesn’t really matter what year as long as it’s standard across all calculations). The SDR for Australia in 2024 was 5.078 per 1,000 standard population, and that’s down from 5.471 ten years ago. That’s a good thing – it means even though we’re ageing, we’re less likely to die at any given age than 10 years ago.

If you’re planning a funeral home, you want to know the total number of deaths and the CDR.  If you’re looking analysing how healthy we are and whether we’re dying later over time, you want to look at the SDR, and possibly causes of death (which supplements this publication, out in November).

This chart directly from the ABS shows that the age-adjusted SDR has consistently declined over the past 40 years, though the rate of decline has slowed (you can also see the 2022 blip from COVID). Males still die at a faster rate than females but the gap is closing, with male death rates declining faster.