Population and Migration: Understanding the Numbers

Productivity Commission (maps@pc.gov.au)
Additional contact information
Productivity Commission: Productivity Commission

No 101, Research Papers from Productivity Commission, Government of Australia

Abstract: Australia is largely a nation of immigrants. From the First Fleet to the post-war wave of assisted passages, to the present day, migration has always been at the centre of this country’s development. As time has passed, however, and our population has grown and spread, it is natural that the consensus that we must ‘populate or perish’ would give way to more diverse and nuanced perspectives about migration and population growth, and the policy implications.

Debate has ebbed and flowed over the years and flared up again in the lead-up to the federal election. However, that debate arguably was not as well informed by the facts as the topic deserves. Many numbers were cited, drawing on various demographic concepts, but these often appeared contradictory or based on only part of the story. As a consequence, the public is likely to have been left confused, bemused or misled on what is a key public policy issue.

In this Research Paper, the Commission has sought to improve the information base for public discussion by describing the main demographic trends and what lies behind them. That said, it does not seek to be exhaustive, but rather to focus on those features that seem most important.

Keywords: immigration; population; migration; population growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 100 pages
Date: 2010-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-mig
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/104128/population-migration.pdf Full pdf file (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/104128/population-migration.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/104128/population-migration.pdf)
http://www.pc.gov.au/research/commissionresearch/population-migration Publication webpage (text/html)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.pc.gov.au/research/commissionresearch/population-migration [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.pc.gov.au/research/commissionresearch/population-migration)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:prodrp:2010_001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Papers from Productivity Commission, Government of Australia Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MAPS (mpw@pc.gov.au).