Fed: Snapshot shows life improving - but not for environment

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Fed: Snapshot shows life improving - but not for environment

By Shane Wright

CANBERRA, April 4 AAP - The lives of everyday Australians are getting better, but theenvironment is worse off for it.

A snapshot of Australia and whether life is getting better, released today by the AustralianBureau of Statistics, gives a mixed report card.

The study, which looks at how life has changed over the past decade, found a personborn in 1999 can expect to live to almost 77, an improvement of three years over the 1989life expectancy level.

For women, life expectancy has improved two years to 82.

For indigenous Australians there was a similar improvement, but an Aboriginal Australianmale's life expectancy is just 56 and for women 63.

Throughout the 1990s, Australians of all persuasions became better educated, with theproportion of people holding a vocational or higher education qualification improvingfrom 46 per cent of the population to 50 per cent.

Australians were more likely to live alone through the 1990s, and more likely to spendtime by themselves.

The national income of Australia grew by around 2.5 per cent a year through the decade.

Real net disposable income per capita hit $27,000, but among the states there weresubstantial differences.

Victoria averaged the strongest per capita gross product growth through the 1990s at2.7 per cent, just ahead of Queensland (2.6 per cent) and NSW (2.5 per cent).

In Tasmania, the average was just 1.3 per cent.

The real income of the poorest and the better off both rose by around five per cent.

While income was up five per cent, the real wealth of people improved just one per cent a year.

The ABS estimated every single Australian was worth about $127,500, with one of thebiggest drivers being the acquisition of computers by households.

While materially the world is getting better, the same cannot be said about the naturalenvironment.

Greenhouse gas emissions have climbed 17 per cent over the decade, while the annualclearance of native vegetation was now 40 per cent higher than it was in 1991.

Although no known animal species were made extinct through the 1990s, the number ofendangered or vulnerable animals climbed a third to 160.

While there were no figures in 1990 on total land degradation, by 2000 it was foundthat 5.7 million hectares were affected or at risk of salinity.

More than 10 per cent of the nation's rivers, and of groundwater supplies, were deemedto be overused while another 20 per cent was highly developed.

One of the few bright spots on the environmental front has been the improvement inair quality, as the introduction of unleaded petrol has cleaned up the air, particularlyin major cities.

AAP sw/daw/mg/de I

KEYWORD: LIFE