Rates of alcohol and drug abuse are increasing, according to the inaugural Australian Youth Development Index

Australia’s youth have become far more politically engaged since 2006 and civic participation has increased significantly, putting a lie to the stereotype that young people are disengaged.

But their health and wellbeing has been deteriorating, with a worrying increase in drug and alcohol abuse over the past 10 years and higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases.

A new national index has been created for Australia to monitor the political, civic, health and labour development of its youth, aged between 10 and 29 years.

The inaugural Australian Youth Development Index (YDI) has been designed by the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Institute for Economics and Peace to measure the progress in our “youth development”. Its launch coincides with International Youth Day.

The index shows the state of youth development across Australia’s states and territories, as well as the improvements and deteriorations that have occurred since 2006. It tracks the developments in youth education, health and wellbeing, employment and opportunity, civic participation and political participation.

There are 6.3 million people between 10 and 29 years old living in Australia.

Overall, the index shows there has been an improvement in the total YDI scores of all states and territories since 2006, except Tasmania.

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The YDI score is a number between 0 and 1, with 1 representing the highest possible level of youth development and zero representing no development at all.

The Australian Capital Territory has consistently remained the best performer in Australia over the past 10 years, while the Northern Territory has consistently been the worst.

But the NT has seen the biggest improvement in performance since 2006, with a 30% increase in its overall YDI score, admittedly off a low base.

Tasmania is the only state or territory that has seen an overall deterioration in its YDI score since 2006, worth 7%.

The scores for Australia: ACT (0.851), New South Wales (0.723), Victoria (0.715), Westerm Australia (0.636), Queensland (0.565), South Australia (0.550), Tasmania (0.437), Northern Territory (0.294).



The report says the political participation of Australia’s youth has seen the largest improvement between 2006 and 2015.

Queensland’s score improved by 250%, and Victoria’s by 165%. The smallest improvement was by 17% in the ACT but this was off an already high-performing score in 2006.

The report also shows a 1% deterioration in the health and wellbeing of Australia’s youth since 2006 – when the global average score has increased by 3%. It says the deterioration has been driven by increasing mental health issues and drug abuse issues in Australia’s youth population.

“Recent illicit drug use amongst youth shows a clear uptrend, with the national average almost doubling from 21% to 39% over five years,” the report says.

“However, the drug-taking behaviours of youth vary between different regions. For example, while NSW has remained stable and WA has seen a decrease, the other regions have experienced notable increases, particularly in Tasmania and the NT where more than double the amount of youth were engaged in recent illicit drug use compared to 2010.

“Queensland and Victoria also saw a significant expansion in the number of youth engaging in recent illicit drug-taking, recording increases of 15% and 18% respectively, whereas the ACT and South Australia saw more modest rises in this metric.”

The report says the national youth suicide average has remained fairly stable in the last decade. “Of particular concern are Tasmania and Queensland, which have by far the highest rates of youth suicide at 44.6 and 39.5 per 100,000 persons respectively,” the report says.

It says there is an “enormous gap” in the suicide rate of Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth, most severely for males. “Suicide rates for Indigenous males aged 25–29 is higher than any other national rate for any country in the world,” the report says.

In the forthcoming 2016 Global Youth Development Index, to be released later this year, Australia ranks 3rd out of 185 countries with a score of 0.84, much higher than the regional average of 0.66 and a global average of 0.62. Australia’s ranking remains unchanged since 2015.