A national report on Indigenous social and economic trends has shown a worsening in the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians on child abuse.

The report titled Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage has been released by Indigenous Affairs Minister, Jenny Macklin, at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting in Darwin.

It is compiled every two years by the productivity commission and measures 50 indicators of disadvantage between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

The latest report shows there has been no improvement in 80 per cent of the economic and social indicators.

It reveals Indigenous children are six times as likely to be abused than non-Indigenous children.

Since 2003, this gap has widened from being four times as likely.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says all governments will have to redouble their efforts in response.

"This report on Indigenous disadvantage is a devastating report," he said.

Neglect and violence

It shows the rate of substantiated notifications for child abuse or neglect for Indigenous children has more than doubled since 1999-2000, from 16 per 1000 children to 35 per 1000 children.

At the same time, the rate for non-Indigenous children has risen from five to six per 1000.

The report says 41 out of every 1000 Indigenous children were subject to care and protection orders, while five out of every 1000 non-Indigenous children were under similar orders.

Indigenous policy professor John Altman says the child abuse gap increase probably reflects the ongoing affects of the marginalisation of Indigenous people.

"Relatively, Indigenous people live in greater poverty, have poorer housing, a poorer education and poorer employment prospects," Professor Altman said.

"And the fact that those gaps exists probably explains to a large extent the high levels of child abuse."

Other violence-related data in the report showed poor outcomes for Indigenous people.

Indigenous people were hospitalised as a result of domestic violence at a rate 34 times higher than non-Indigenous people.

The Indigenous homicide rate was seven times higher than the non-Indigenous rate.

Aboriginal people were 13 times more likely to end up in jail as non-Indigenous people.

The imprisonment rate for Indigenous women and men has increased by 46 and 27 per cent respectively since 2000.

No progress

It says Indigenous literacy and numeracy levels have not lifted.

The proportion of Indigenous 19-year-olds who finished their high school studies in 2007 was only 36 per cent, compared with 74 per cent for their non-Indigenous counterparts.

There was somewhat better news in employment data, with the percentage of Indigenous people employed growing from 43 per cent to 48 per cent between 2001 and 2006.

However, the gap between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous workforce remained at 24 percentage points.

Mr Rudd says trying to find new ways of closing the gap will be a major focus of today's COAG meeting, which Indigenous leaders have been invited to attend.

"The fact that despite all the efforts in the past, when it comes to such basic things as literacy and numeracy standards, that we have achieved no effective progress, means that we have to redouble and treble our efforts to make an impact."

The Productivity Commissioner, Gary Banks, says some economic indicators have improved but not the social measures.

"In many areas we're still observing no change," he said.

The Government is confident its Closing the Gap reforms will see improvements.