The Australian Population

Australia is one of the world’s biggest islands, but at the same time it’s the words smallest continent called Oceania. Australia is home to 22,262,501 people. In the year 1800 on planet Earth we had a population of approximately one billion, today in the year 2013 we now have 7,110,541,300 and rising. Since 1965 the population in Australia has doubled. The baby boom created one of Australia’s biggest generations “the baby boomers”. One in five live in Sydney and one in almost five live in Melbourne. Today Australia is diverse than ever before, one in four weren’t even born there. We can see Australia is experiencing record high birth rates, as a nation they are aging.

The number of ethnic groups in Australia is rising but as it is to date there is a percentage of 92% of whites, 7% Asians and the rest of the percentage belongs to natives and other ethnic groups. The majority of citizens speak English since Australia used to be a colony that belonged to the British. The British used British convicts in the island to work as labor men since they were cheap to hire and already skilled craftsmen, farmers. At one point the colony even became “The finest Harbour in the World.” The colony later went through to gaining its independence on January 26, 1818.

Immediately after the World War 2 birth rates increased in Australia just like in the US and Canada causing the “Baby Boom”. Australia’s “boomers” created 182,000 babies in a single year, but just like in Quebec the population is aging. When a population is aging means that the average Australian age is increasing. This issue is common among developed countries and is the result of declining birth rates, having smaller families and living longer thanks to advances in technology and medicine. This makes it hard for today’s Baby Boomers; they now have to work even longer into their lives and cause them to have a late retirement.

The majority of Australia's population is spread along the coastline. Today’s population is around 20 million, is strongly populated mainly in the large coastal cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. These immensely populated cities then spread out into what we call urban areas, and then branch out into small towns. There