Comparison with OECD countries shows Australia doing well for life expectancy and infant mortality, but worse on male obesity

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Australian men have the highest rate of cancer within the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), though the result may be down to the country’s highly detailed data collection, a comparison of international health statistics has found.

A new tool, released on Tuesday by the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare, helps compare Australia’s performance with other OECD nations against a range of key health indicators by synthesising a range of data sets.

The data showed Australians had the second highest rate of cancer, behind Denmark. Australian men had the highest rate, while Australian women ranked seventh, according to 2017 data from the OECD.

However, the AIHW said Australia’s high rate may be “in part to Australia’s high-quality and virtually complete cancer incidence data”.

“Across OECD countries, the quality and completeness of cancer registry data may vary, in turn affecting the cancer incidence rates provided to the OECD and presented here,” the AIHW said.

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Previous studies have also suggested the rate of cancer diagnosis in Australia is high.

More broadly, the data comparison suggested Australians enjoyed above average health.

“The data show that Australia performs relatively well across most of the indicators,” said Claire Sparke, an AIHW spokeswoman.

But Australia performed much less well on some indicators, particularly overweight and obesity.

Australia ranked ninth of of 23 OECD nations on obesity, with 63% of the population over the age of 15 considered either overweight or obese. The OECD average was 58%.

For men, Australians had the third highest rate of being overweight or obese, behind the United States and Chile.

Life expectancy at birth in Australia was 82.5 years – above the OECD average of 80.6 years – which ranked Australia sixth. Japan had the highest life expectancy, while New Zealand recorded 81.7 years, the UK 81.2 and the US 78.6.

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Australia had the fifth lowest rate of infant mortality, the data showed, with 3.1 deaths per 1,000 live births.

The report did not include a specific data comparison with Australia’s Indigenous population, but previous AIHW data shows they fare markedly poorer than the OECD average.

The comparison also examined Australians’ health habits and lifestyle choices.

It showed Australians were the sixth least likely to smoke within the OECD, but consumed more alcohol than the average.

They were also much less likely to be injured in a road accident, especially compared with New Zealand, where injuries from car crashes were most common across the OECD.

The data also suggested that Australians’ reputation for calling in sick from work may be misplaced.

At 7.3 days off sick per person, per year, Australians were well below the average of 8.3 days. In the US, where sick leave is not a guaranteed work right, employees took only 3.6 days off work on average.