This monograph has its genesis in an approach made to the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). CAEPR was asked to undertake an analysis of 1995 National Health Survey data as input to the AIHW’s second report on expenditures on health services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This approach was made late in 1999, and agreement to undertake the work was completed early in 2000. The AIHW’s report Expenditures on Health Services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, 1998–99 (AIHW cat. no. IHW 7) was published in 2001, but it did not include the CAEPR analysis. This delay was outside CAEPR’s control and resulted from a series of unexpected delays in data acquisition and processing. This meant that CAEPR’s analysis was only completed late in 2001; it was agreed by AIHW and the Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health in the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing that the CAEPR analysis should be published and widely disseminated as a late companion to the AIHW publication. The support of the Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health in facilitating this publication is gratefully acknowledged.

CAEPR’s specific task was to analyse and report on health expenditures on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in comparison with expenditures on other Australians of similar socio-economic status. Two key relationships are explored—between expenditures and the distribution of equivalent family income, and between expenditures and health status. At one level, the findings extend the analysis in the report Expenditures on Health Services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People by J. Deeble, C. Mathers, L. Smith, J. Goss, R. Webb and V. Smith, published in 1998. In particular, access to 1995 National Health Survey (NHS) data provided an opportunity for more meaningful analysis of income relativities, with an added link to health status, because of the inclusion in the 1995 NHS of an Indigenous identifier for the first time.

This monograph is published in the CAEPR Research Monograph Series in part because it appears later than the second AIHW report, and in part because it utilises an established channel of publication which targets Indigenous interest groups, as well as the academic community and policy makers. Though written as a stand-alone document, its value is enhanced if read as a companion to the second AIHW report. As such, it reflects a positive outcome of collaboration between CAEPR and two government agencies (AIHW and the Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health in the Department of Health and Ageing), with important consultancy assistance also from the ABS.

I commend the monograph’s authors, Matthew Gray, Boyd Hunter and John Taylor, for their perseverance and research commitment when faced by unanticipated hurdles, and believe this research outcome, while a little late, will be of great value in the general area of Indigenous health policy and research.

Professor Jon Altman Director, CAEPR August 2002