Birth and Death Rates in Australia

Q.1 Explain why age adjustment can be useful for compare different population groups. What are the two most common methods of performing adjustments?

Q.2 The WHO indicators for crude death rate, disease prevalence and incidence are expressed per 100,000 population; however, data for the crude birth rate is expressed per 1,000 population.

Does the crude birth rate includes stillborn babies?

What would be considered a high birth rate? Or a low one? Provide an example of each and outline some factors that affect birth rate.

Q.3 Consider a situation in which 500 people work in the same building.

Twenty had a head cold on 1 June 2014, which conferred immunity for 3 months. How many people were at risk of head colds on 1 August 2014?

Q.4 What would be the cumulative incidence of head colds if a further 50 people became infected between 1 June and 1 August 2014?

How did you arrive at this conclusion?

Question 5

Open the resource: Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2014). Table 1.9 Deaths summary, Australia 2002-2012. In Deaths, Australia, 2012 (No. 3302.02). Retrieved from https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/3302.02012?OpenDocument

Using the table above and the ABS data from Table 1.9 describing deaths per age group, calculate:

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  • The crude death rate in Australia for 2012
  • The age-specific death rate for Australians aged 0-4 years
  • The age-specific death rate for Australians aged >85 years