Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-12T10:44:13.311Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Association between Health and Education in Australia: Indigenous/non-Indigenous Comparisons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Nicholas Biddle
Nicholas Biddle*
Affiliation:
Australian National University, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Relative to the rest of the population, Indigenous Australians are disadvantaged across a number of outcomes. Not only is income lower, but so is life expectancy. Furthermore, the incidence of a number of chronic conditions is much higher (especially after controlling for the younger age profile). There are a number of interrelated historic, social and economic reasons for these poorer outcomes, but one important factor is likely to be substantially lower education levels. That is, Indigenous Australians are much less likely to finish high school, and for those that do, less likely go on to university or other studies. This paper looks in an empirical way at the relationship between education and health for Indigenous Australians, comparing it to similar associations for the non-Indigenous population. Using probit model estimates on data from the 2001 National Health Survey, two traditional health outcomes (self-assessed health and chronic conditions) as well as a set of health risk-factors are examined. For all health measures used, those with lower education levels have significantly worse health outcomes. Interestingly, education is found to have a significantly different magnitude of association for some measures across Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , September 2006 , pp. 107 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2006

References

ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) (2004a) National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey, ABS cat. no. 4714.0.Google Scholar
ABS (2004b) Occasional Paper: Health Risk Factors - a Guide to Time Series Comparability from the National Health Survey, Australia, ABS cat. no. 4826.0.55.001.Google Scholar
AIHW (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare) (2003) The Health and Welfare of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples 2003, AIHW cat. no. IHW-11.Google Scholar
AIHW (2005) The Health and Welfare of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples 2003, AIHW cat. no. IHW-14.Google Scholar
Altman, J.C., Biddle, N., Hunter, B.H. (2005) ‘Indigenous socioeconomic change 1971–2001: A historical perspective’, Australian Economic History Review, 45(3).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Altman, J.C., Buchanan, G., Biddle, N. (2006) The real economy in remote and very remote Australia’ in Hunter, B.H. (ed) Assessing Recent Evidence on Indigenous Socioeconomic Outcomes: A focus on the 2002 NATSISS, CAEPR, Research Monograph No. 26.Google Scholar
Biddle, N. (2005) Employment and income benefits of VET for Indigenous Australians: Variation by geography, Paper presented at the 2005 NCVER VET Research Conference, Wodonga.Google Scholar
Boughton, B. (2000) ‘What is the connection between Aboriginal education and Aboriginal health’, Co-operative Research Centre for Aboriginal and Tropical Health, Occasional Paper Series, Issue 2.Google Scholar
Borland, J. (2002) New estimates of the private rate of return to university education in Australia, University of Melbourne, Working Paper no 14/02.Google Scholar
Caldwell, J.C., Caldwell, P. (1995) The cultural, social and behavioural component of health improvement: The evidence from health transition studies, Paper presented at the 1995 Aboriginal Health: Social and Cultural Transitions Conference, Darwin.Google Scholar
Card, D. (2001) ‘Estimating the return to schooling: Progression on some persistent econometric problems', Econometrica, 69(5).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cawley, J., Markowitz, S., Tauras, J. (2004) ‘Lighting up and slimming down: The effects of body weight and cigarette prices on adolescent smoking initiation’, Journal of Health Economics, 23(2).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Collins, B. (1999) Learning Lessons: An Independent Review of Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory, Northern Territory Department of Education, Darwin.Google Scholar
Crimmins, E.M., Saito, Y. (2001) ‘Trends in healthy life expectancy in the United States 1970–1990: Gender, racial and education differences', Social Science and Medicine, 52.Google Scholar
Crossley, T.F., Kennedy, S. (2002) ‘The reliability of self assessed health status', Journal of Health Economics, 21(4).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Feinstein, L., Hammond, C., Woods, L., Preston, J., Bynner, J. (2003) The contribution of adult learning to health and social capital’, Wider Benefits of Learning, Research Report No.8.Google Scholar
Frederick, S., Loewenstein, G., O'Donoghue, T. (2002) ‘Time Discounting and Time Preference: A Critical Review’, Journal of Economic.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilleskie, D.B., Harrison, A.L. (1998) The effect of endogenous health inputs on the relationship between health and education’, Economics of Education Review, 17(3).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, A., Boughton, B. (2001) ‘Education and health behaviour of Indigenous Australians: Evidence from the 1994 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey (NATSIS)’, Co-operative Research Centre for Aboriginal and Tropical Health, Occasional Paper Series, Issue 3.Google Scholar
Grossman, M. (1972) ‘On the concept of health capital and the demand for health’, Journal of Political Economy, 80(2).Google Scholar
Jones, A.M. (2000) x2018;Health Econometrics' in Culyer, A.J., Newhouse, J.P. (eds) Handbook of Health Economics Volume 1A, Elsevier, Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Junankar, P.N., Liu, J. (2003) ‘Estimating the social rate of return to education for Indigenous Australians', Education Economics, 11(2).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenkel, D.S. (1991) ‘Health behaviour, health knowledge and schooling’, Journal of Political Economy, 99(2).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, S. (2002) The relationship between education and health in Australia and Canada, SEDAP Research Paper No.93.Google Scholar
Lleras-Muney, A. (2005) ‘The relationship between education and adult mortality in the United States', Review of Economic Studies, 72(1).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marmot, M.G., Bosma, H., Hemingway, H., Brunner, E., Stansfeld, S. (1997) ‘Contribution of job control and other risk factors to social variations in coronary heart disease incidence’, The Lancet, 350(9073).Google ScholarPubMed
MCEETYA (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs) (2001) Solid Foundations: Health and Education Partnership for Indigenous Children aged 0 to 8 Years MCEETYA Discussion Paper, Carlton.Google Scholar
NSW Board of Studies (2004) Personal development, health and physical education, [Online] Available: http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_sc/index.html.Google Scholar
Ross, C.E., Mirowsky, J. (1999) ‘Refining the association between education and health: The effects of quantity credential and selectivity’, Demography, 36(4).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ross, C.E., Wu, C. (1996) ‘Education, age and the cumulative advantage in health’, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 37(1).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sibthorpe, B., Anderson, I., Cunningham, J. (2001) ‘Self-Assessed Health Among Indigenous Australians: How valid is a Global question?’, American Journal of Public Health, 91(10).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
World Health Organisation (WHO) (2004) Constitution of the World Health Organization, Forty-fourth edition, [Online] Available: http://www.who.int (accessed on 20 July 2005).Google Scholar
Wolfe, B., Haveman, R. (2001) ‘Accounting for the social and non-market benefits of education’, in Heliwell, J. (ed), The Contribution of Human and Social Capital to Sustained Economic Growth and Well-being, OECD/Human Resources Development Canada, University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver.Google Scholar
Zubrick, S.R., Silburn, S.R., De Maio, JA, Shepherd, C., Griffin, J.A., Dalby, R.B., Mitrou, F.G., Lawrence, D.M., Hayward, C., Pearson, G., Milroy, H., Milroy, J., Cox, A. (2006) The Western Australian Aboriginal Child Health Survey: Improving the Educational Experiences of Aboriginal Children and Young People, Curtin University of Technology and Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Perth.Google Scholar