In 2021, 24.3 percent of First Nations people aged 20 to 64 living in the Australian Capital Territory of Australia had a Bachelor degree in Australia. The national average for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders was 9.8 percent. Just four percent of First Nations people living in the Northern Territory had a bachelor degree as of 2021.

At the 2021 Australian census, 278,043 people in New South Wales were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. New South Wales is Australia’s most populated state, also housing Australia’s largest city, Sydney. By comparison, Australia’s second largest state, Victoria, was home to around 66 thousand Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

There are around 800,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia, which represents just over three percent of the Australian population. Indigenous people are often referred to as Australia's first people or the traditional custodians of the land in recognition of their ancestors inhabiting Australia more than 60,000 years ago. Australia's Indigenous peoples are represented by two distinct groups. Aboriginal people come from the Australian mainland. Torres Strait Islander people inhabit the group of Islands between the northern tip of Queensland and Papua New Guinea and represent less than 40,000 people.

Closing the gap

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples experience significantly poorer health and wellbeing outcomes when compared to their non-Indigenous Australian counterparts. The average life expectancy of Indigenous Australians is around eight years shorter than that of the non-Indigenous population. In education, Indigenous Australians are also underrepresented, but attendance rates are improving and in 2019, full-time Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students numbered well over 200,000 people.

The share of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population in Australia in 2019 was highest in New South Wales with around 33 percent of the indigenous population in Australia living there. Comparatively, the Australian Capital Territory accounted for only one percent of the country's indigenous population in that year.

In 2019, 65.9 percent of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population aged 20 to 24 years had attained a year 12 equivalent level of education. Of this group, Indigenous Australians in the ACT and Victoria were leading the other states and territories. Although year 12 equivalent attainment and enrollment rates for Indigenous Australians have been increasing in recent years, they still fall behind that of the non-Indigenous population. Closing the gap on EducationIn an effort to close the gap in disadvantage for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the federal, state and territory Governments created the Closing the Gap Framework in 2008. The Framework identified seven target areas for improvement, which were early childhood, schooling, health, economic participation, healthy homes, safe communities, and governance and leadership. Only early childhood and schooling were considered to be on target in 2020. Child care enrollment rates were steadily increasing and more Indigenous Australian’s were attaining a bachelor degree. However, the states and territories with the highest Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations seemed more likely to lag behind. EmploymentAnother target of the Closing the Gap Framework, which is closely interlinked with education, is the economic participation target. In a 2015 survey, almost a third of Aboriginal jobseekers indicated that their level of education or training was an impediment to finding work. According to the Framework, the Australian federal, state and territory governments are working toward 60 percent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25 to 64 to be employed by 2028. However, in 2019 the target was reported to be not on track, with over 50 percent of Aboriginal people unemployed or out of the labor force.

A survey about the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders revealed that approximately 29 percent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had used substances in the last 12 months in Australia as of 2019. During the 2019 financial year survey period, around 27 percent of Indigenous Australians living in remote areas of Australia stated that they had used substances in the last 12 months.

In 2023, the average school attendance rate for First Nations students in Australia was just over 77 percent. This was more than ten percent lower than the average attendance for non-Indigenous students in Australia that year. After a drop in attendance in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, attendance has been slowly rising to pre-Covid-19 numbers.

The average life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia is just one indicator of the gap in health outcomes that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. From 2015 to 2017, the average life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island men and women in major cities in Australia was 72.1 and 76.5 years, respectively. By comparison, the non-Indigenous population lived around eight years longer on average. This divide is even more pronounced in rural and very remote areas where the life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders drops to below 70 years.

Closing the gap

Over the past decade the federal, state and territory Governments of Australia have been working toward closing the gap of inequality experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with the Closing the Gap Framework, introduced in 2008. The Framework identified seven target areas for improving the health and wellbeing outcomes of Indigenous Australians. These target areas covered early childhood, schooling, health, economic participation, healthy homes, safe communities, and governance and leadership. In 2020, school enrollment rates were steadily increasing and more Indigenous Australians were attaining a bachelor degree. As a result, the schooling target was considered to be ‘on track’ along with early childhood education participation.

More work to be done

Although two of the seven targets were ‘on track’ in 2020, the other five Closing the Gap targets were not. This indicated that Australia still has a long way to go in order to significantly reduce the gap of disadvantage faced by indigenous Australians. This is evident in the proportion of Aboriginal Australians who remain unemployed or not in the labor force and Indigenous youth incarceration rates, which have been increasing.

In 2021, the proportion of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people living in major cities in Australia amounted to 41.1 percent of the Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander population. By comparison, 73.7 percent of the non-Indigenous population lived in major cities. Although the majority of the Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander population lived in major cities and inner regional areas, almost one in ten lived in very remote communities.

In 2021, the fertility rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women between the ages of 25 to 29 in Australia was 134.5 births per 1,000 women. By comparison, the most fertile age group for all Australian women was 30 to 34 years old at 120.6 births per 1,000 women.

As of 2023, the region's average share of the indigenous population living under the poverty line was 42.3 percent. The most recent data for Colombia positions the country with 63.5 percent of the population, the highest in Latin America.

In 2020 the child mortality rate of indigenous peoples in Australia under the age of five was 147.5 deaths per 100,000. By comparison, the non-Indigenous child mortality rate was less than half that of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the country. In 2008 the Australian government made a commitment to achieving equality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through the Closing the Gap framework. One of the commitments made by this framework was to halve the Indigenous child mortality rate in the country over a decade from 2008. Although some progress was made, this target was not achieved.

In 2021, around 87.4 percent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons living in Australia whose main language was a language other than English were able to speak English well or very well. This marked an increase compared to 78 percent at the beginning of the measured period in 2006.

In 2021, around 97 percent of Indigenous Australians whose main language was a language other than English living in the Australian Capital Territory spoke English well or very well. The high level of English proficiency was also reported in Tasmania and Victoria, with a respective 96.6 and 94 percent of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations without English as their main language speaking English well or very well.

According to the 2021 Census conducted in Australia, over 90 percent of the resident population in the country were non-Indigenous. Comparatively, just over three percent of the population identified as Indigenous, the majority of whom were Aboriginal.

This statistic presents the results of a survey about the share of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders speaking an Australian Indigenous language from 2002 to 2014-15, by remoteness. During the 2014-15 survey period, around 54.9 percent of Indigenous Australians living in remote areas of Australia stated that they spoke an Australian Indigenous language.

In 2019, 74.6 percent of the non-Indigenous population in Australia were employed and just over 20 percent were not in the labor force. Almost 50 percent of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population were in employment and just under 40 percent were not in the workforce.

This statistic presents the results of a survey about the share of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who's main language spoken at home is an Australian Indigenous language from 2002 to 2014-15, by remoteness. During the 2014-15 survey period, around 40.8 percent of Indigenous Australians living in remote areas of Australia stated that their main language spoken at home was an Australian Indigenous language.

In 2022, 254,710 full-time Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students were enrolled in schools in Australia. This number has been on a steady increase since 2006. Since 2007 the Australian government has been working towards closing the gap on indigenous disadvantage in terms of life expectancy, children's mortality, education and employment.

Among selected Latin American countries, Colombia had the highest share of indigenous population with an average per capita income below the extreme poverty line, at 46.8 percent. Ecuador followed second, with 28.5 percent of indigenous people living in extreme poverty. Those two countries also had the highest share of indigenous people living in poverty.

Between 2012 and 2022, the share of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia's prison system trended upwards, increasing from 27.2 percent in 2012 to 31.8 percent in 2022. Indigenous Australians are starkly overrepresented in the criminal justice system.