New look and feel for Australian Census Stats

Yep, you're not imagining it. We have redesigned the look-and-feel of our blog. We have also rationalised the tags associated with each article, so hopefully you'll find it easier to navigate. The tags are displayed at the top of the site for easy access.

You may also have noticed that we're working off of a new domain name. Previously we used censusstats.blogspot.com.au, but we have now acquired www.ozcensusstats.com to use for the blog.

If you like this blog, we'd love it if you shared our links with your friends and colleagues and posted them on your favourite social networking sites and forums.

As for the content you're really interested in - i.e. new stats and articles - we're working on one or two things at the moment. Hopefully we'll have a fresh article to you within the next week.

Let us know what you think of the recent changes to the site!

Australian atheism heatmap

"Calling Atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color." --Don Hirschberg

My previous post, Religion in Australia mapped, treated the 'no religion' census response the same as religion-specific responses (such as Catholic, Islam etc.). This heatmap intends on redressing the balance somewhat by focusing solely on the amount of non-religious people around Australia.

You can peruse the map directly below, or click this link to open a new browser/tab. The colour scheme is quite simple: the darker the shade of green, the more heathens are located in the area.



*Please note: for convenience, I use the word atheist interchangeably with 'non-religious'. However the census response covers alternative views, such as agnosticism.

Religion in Australia mapped

Now for an interactive map that lets you browse the religious landscape of Australia. Each suburb in Australia has been classified based on its religious make-up. The classification is designed to highlight where there is particular concentrations of certain religions. It has looser requirements for rarer Australian faiths such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism. Areas classified with common groups such as Catholicism, Anglicanism and non-religious demographics have stricter criteria and require significant proportions of residents.

The colour classifications

The map uses color classifications to identify particularly notable religions in a geographical area. The areas without a colour classification are simply not worth classifying with a single religion - because no religion is dominant enough in these areas to highlight.

The map

The interactive map is below. Clicking on a suburb reveals more details. All of Australia is covered therefore the map can be navigated as necessary. Across the whole of Australia, the five most common responses were:

• Catholic 25.3%
• No Religion 22.3%
• Anglican 17.1%
• Uniting Church 5.0% 
• Presbyterian and Reformed 2.8% (categorised as Christian (Other) here).

Some observations from the map:

• Sydney (click the link to open a new window/tab) has a fairly large amount of religious clusters:
• Areas with 30-40% Islamic residents in the west, including Auburn and Greenacre
• Areas with over 40% Buddhists around Canley Vale in the city's west
• Almost half of the residents are Jewish around Dover Heights
• Hindu
• There is a substantial Eastern Orthodox population to the south of the CBD around Rockdale/Banksia
• Inner city residents have more of a tendency to be non-religious
• The dominant faith in the remaining suburbs is Catholicism

• Melbourne also has a number of religious clusters:
• Substantial Islamic clusters exist around Meadow Heights in the north-west and Dandenong in the south east
• There are two Buddhist clusters; one around Sunshine in the west of the city and another around Springvale in the south-east.
• A few Eastern Orthodox clusters exist in the east of the city, for example, the Oakleigh/Huntingdale area
• The two most dominant groups overall are the Catholics and the non-religious residents. There appears to be more Catholics in the west and more non-religious residents in the east of the city.

• Brisbane has a more even spread than Sydney and Melbourne.
• The non-religious dominate the inner city
• The largest groups in the suburbs are generally Catholics
• The only substantial minority cluster is in Kuraby, where 21% of residents are Islamic

• Perth follows a similar pattern to Brisbane in that the inner city is dominated by younger, non-religious residents and the suburbs tend to be either dominated by Catholics (or fairly evenly spread)

• The inner-west and inner-west of Adelaide are dominated by large proportions of Catholics.
• There is a cluster of Eastern Orthodox in the inner-west city centre area of Richmond
• The remainder of the CBD and suburbs are dominated by the non-religious demographic

• Rural and regional Australia contains a broad mix:
• Religions such as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism are very rare compared to the large cities
• Anglicanism is extremely popular across broad swathes of the country, particularly in rural New South Wales and Queensland
• In some areas, such as APY Lands, the dominant faith is traditional Aboriginal religion
• As with the cities, Catholicism and non-religious demographics remain very common in rural Australia

Data is provided from the 2011 census undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. If you would like to read more about Religion and the 2011 Australian Census, click here to read a previous post on the subject.

Australian population density heatmap

Here are some interactive heatmaps that let you compare the population density of Australian suburbs.

If you click on a suburb you will see more details of the suburb, including population density figures, plus other demographic stats. The whole of Australia is covered, so you can zoom out and move around the maps as you need.

The densest suburb is Pyrmont/Ultimo in Sydney with 12,563 people per square kilometre (see below). At the other end of the scale, the emptiest area in Australia is the Western region of South Australia, with 0.001 persons per square kilometre, or one person per 1000 square kilometres.

Sydney

Melbourne

Brisbane

Perth

The source of this data is the 2011 Australian Census, undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

If you want to read more about population density in Australia, have a look at this article.

Australia: the world's fastest growing large rich country

In the decade between 2000 and 2010, Australia's population grew by 15.1%, more than any other large rich country. Spain was second with 14.4% growth and Canada was third with a 14.4% increase.

Population growth in IMF advanced economies with a population greater than 10 million, 2000-2010

Despite the country facing many of the same demographic challenges as other rich nations - namely an ageing population and a declining birth rate - it has managed to sustain strong population growth. This growth has been largely fueled by immigration; for example, in 2009, Australia had the highest rate of per-capita immigration in the OECD (the world's rich country club) in 2009.

Relative population growth 1980-2015,  top ten advanced economies

If smaller advanced economies are included in the analysis, only Singapore, Israel and Cyprus have outpaced Australia since 1980. When taking the IMF's 2015 population estimates, Singapore's growth rate is 123% during the period 1980-2015. Israel's rate is 119%, the growth rate for Cyprus rate is 78% and Australia comes in at 59%.

As the twelfth-emptiest country in the world, Australia certainly has the physical capacity to keep up its high rate of population growth. This is a key strength of the Australian economy as it can supplement its resource-led productivity gains with population-derived gains.

Population growth of Australian cities 2001-2011

Of Australia's larger cities, the south-east Queensland cities of Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast have been the fastest growing in the country from 2001 to 2011. The Gold Coast grew by 2.5% per year during the decade and the Sunshine Coast grew by 2.4% over the period.

Perth was the fastest growing capital during the decade to the 2011 census, with an annual rate of 2.14%. Queensland capital Brisbane was close behind with a growth rate of 2.11% over the period. The closeness of the figures between these two cities masks the accelerating growth in Perth since 2006. In the first half of the decade, Brisbane significantly outpaced Perth; however since 2006 the roles have reversed and Perth achieved a rate of 2.69% per year between 2006-2011.

The following chart uses the ABS's Greater Capital City Statistical Areas for the capitals, and Statistical Area Level 4 boundaries for the Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, Newcastle and Wollongong. This ensures consistent boundaries and no crossover. The data source is the 2011 Australian census.

Annual population growth rates of major Australian cities 2001-2011

Australia's largest city, Sydney, only managed a growth rate of around 1% during the decade to 2011. This is around half the growth rate seen in Perth and south-east Queensland. The Brisbane-Gold Coast-Sunshine Coast conurbation grew from a population of 2,357,417 to 2,933,714; equivalent to a growth rate of 2.2% per year during 2001-2011.

The population capacity of Australia

Australia is one of the emptiest countries in the world. In fact, it is the 12th least densely populated country in the world, ranked alongside vast, empty territories such as Mongolia and Western Sahara.

However given that a significant area of Australia is arid desert, perhaps it has reached capacity, constrained by limited food production? Certainly, Small Australia advocates such as Dick Smith appear to think that Australia is under unsustainable population pressure, having made comments this week that Brisbane increasing its population to 4 million would be "complete madness".

Unfortunately for Dick, the food capacity figures don't support his view. Australia has by far the most food growing capacity per capita on earth. Real Population Density measures the number of people per kilometre of arable land. The chart below inverses Real Population Density and shows the amount of arable land per person - and Australia clearly has the largest by a significant margin.

The amount of arable land per capita, in square metres. Australia has by far the most arable land per resident. Other notable countries are highlighted in orange for comparison.

So we can see that Australia under-uses its arable land relative to other countries. But what could its population be if it matched the utilisation seen in other nations? The chart below shows what Australia's population could be.

If Australia had the Real Population Density seen in each of these nations, what would its population be?

If Australia fed as many people as the world average with its arable land, its population would be 152 million, around 7 times its current population, or just under half of the population of the United States.

Australia could allow its population to grow to 84 million, and it would match the utilisation of food growing capacity of the United States. If it grew to a massive 1.4 billion, it would only then be matching Japan and South Korea's real population density.

Of course there are multiple factors that can skew these figures. Food exports and imports will affect the figures at a national level. Other parameters include level of development and cultural differences; these will affect how food is used. Perhaps the fairest comparison is the United States - a nation of a similar geographical area, development level and culture - which indicates an Australian population of 84 million is entirely sustainable.

The 'Real Population Density' figures used here are derived from the 2005 CIA World Factbook.