To date, planning processes in Indigenous communities have all too often relied on dated demographic information. This creates a sense of uncertainty in assessing the adequacy of policy to address shortfalls in social and economic infrastructure. Such policy development is typically reactive to needs as they become evident (for example, in terms of post facto responses to housing shortages), as opposed to being proactive in seeking to anticipate and plan for expected requirements. However, being proactive requires a measure of future requirements for government works and services, and this is something that is only rarely achieved for Indigenous communities. This is not the case for mainstream communities throughout Australia where the approach to settlement planning is much more prospective.
For example, State and local government planning authorities routinely develop future scenarios and often seek budgetary allocations on the basis of anticipated needs. A key element in this process is the production of small-area population projections or forecasts. While the ABS provides official projections of State and Territory and SLA populations, the individual States and Territories, in turn, also produce regional and local area projections, often down to the Local Government Area level (Bell 1992; W.A. Ministry of Planning 2000). For these purposes a standard cohort-component methodology is generally applied, and this practice is adopted here to project the Indigenous population of the East Kimberley as a whole to 2016. Future population numbers in the study region are then derived pro rata.
The cohort-component method carries forward the preliminary 2001 Indigenous ERP for the East Kimberley to 2016 by successive five-year periods. The projection is based on ageing the population by five-year blocks, subjecting each group to age- and sex-specific mortality, fertility and net migration regimes as follows:
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Survival rates from the Indigenous life tables for the Northern Territory (ABS 2002b) are applied on the assumption that these are more likely to reflect the mortality profile of Indigenous people in the study region than rates derived from the Western Australian life table. These rates are also held constant for the projection period because evidence shows that life expectancy generally for Indigenous people in recent times has shown no sign of improvement (Kinfu and Taylor 2002).
-
Age specific fertility rates based on births to Indigenous women in the Western Australian Midwives Notification System for the SLAs of Wyndham-East Kimberley and Halls Creek are applied. These data produce a TFR of 3.3, which is substantially higher than the Indigenous TFR of 2.2 for Western Australia as a whole and is more in line with rates reported from similar remote regions of Northern Australia (Taylor & Bell 2001).
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In the absence of an operational model of migration, and in light of the erratic pattern displayed by net migration estimates (Taylor & Bell 2001), net migration is held at zero for all ages.
-
No allowance is made for population change via shifts in Indigenous identification.
The actual projection is conducted separately for males and females in five-year blocks from 2001 to 2016. Projected births for the 2001-2006 period are added to the existing 2001 population (see Table 2.5) and each cohort is then subjected to respective survival rates to arrive at an estimate of the population in each age group in 2006. This process is continued through to 2016.
Projections of the non-Indigenous population are more problematic. One approach to developing these might be to derive them as a residual between the Indigenous projections and projections of the total regional population. Projections for the total population were produced by the Western Australian Ministry of Planning using 1996 ERPs as the base, but at the time of writing 2001-based projections had not been prepared. However, given that the assumptions underlying the development of estimates for the Indigenous and total populations are inevitably quite different, the creation of a residual (non-Indigenous) population in this way is statistically problematic. Any estimation and projection of a ‘non-Indigenous’ population would need to be guided by its own unique underlying assumptions, and the development of these is beyond the scope of the present exercise. Indeed, the social construction of such a population raises questions as to whether it is statistically possible at all. For these reasons, projections of the non-Indigenous population are not presented here.
Table 2.7. Indigenous population of the East Kimberley Region by five year age group: 2001 and 2016
|
Age group |
ERP 2001 |
Projection 2016 |
Net change |
% change |
 |
||||
|
0-4 |
842 |
1,089 |
247 |
29.3 |
|
5-9 |
769 |
986 |
217 |
28.2 |
|
10-14 |
717 |
893 |
176 |
24.5 |
|
15-19 |
637 |
837 |
200 |
31.4 |
|
20-24 |
535 |
755 |
220 |
41.1 |
|
25-29 |
480 |
694 |
214 |
44.6 |
|
30-34 |
452 |
604 |
152 |
33.6 |
|
35-39 |
379 |
498 |
119 |
31.4 |
|
40-44 |
281 |
433 |
152 |
54.1 |
|
45-49 |
247 |
385 |
138 |
55.9 |
|
50-54 |
167 |
310 |
143 |
85.6 |
|
55-59 |
149 |
218 |
69 |
46.3 |
|
60-64 |
108 |
174 |
66 |
61.1 |
|
65-69 |
93 |
103 |
10 |
10.8 |
|
70-74 |
50 |
74 |
24 |
48.0 |
|
75+ |
94 |
44 |
-50 |
-53.2 |
|
||||
|
Total |
6,000 |
8,098 |
2,098 |
35.0 |
Indigenous population totals projected to 2016 for the East Kimberley region are shown in Table 2.7 by five year age group, together with numeric and percentage change from the 2001 ERP. Overall, by 2016, the Indigenous population is projected to increase by 35% (or 2.3% per annum) to reach a population of 8,098, an increase of just over 2,000 persons. If the Northern East Kimberley retains its 2001 share of this wider regional population (72%), then the projected Indigenous population of the study region in 2016 will be 5,831 (an increase of 1,514). As shown by the percentage change by age group, much of this growth will occur in the working age groups with the population aged between 15 and 50 years increasing by some 1,338. Once again, if the Northern East Kimberley share remains the same, then numbers in this working age range will increase by around 1,000.
While this projection is correct according to the algorithms applied, it is only preliminary and there are several refinements that, if developed, would provide for greater certainty in the assumptions. In particular, there may be scope for some refinement of net migration assumptions based on a greater appreciation of regional economic development plans, especially in regard to Indigenous employment targets, and other social and economic factors that may induce migration. An allied issue here would be the need for more detailed analysis of inter-regional population movement for education and training purposes.
One device frequently deployed to canvass a range of possible projection outcomes is the calculation of several projection series based on varying assumptions. The current calculations involve the use of only one series. An obvious option, then, for further development of these projections would be to generate alternative scenarios based on possible combinations of falling/rising/stable fertility and mortality and varying assumptions about net migration. While there is some heuristic potential here, it obviously makes sense to base such exploration on plausible indicators, and so the indicators themselves would also need to be assessed.
In using the projections as a means of targeting policy, it is possible to estimate the future size of the Indigenous and non-Indigenous resident labour force by applying labour force participation rates to the projected working-age populations. If likely future trends in employment numbers could also be established, then the quantum of need for additional job creation may be calculated according to specified or agreed employment levels. This exercise would essentially represent a regionalised version of similar calculations of Indigenous employment demand made at the national level (Taylor and Hunter 1998; Hunter, Kinfu and Taylor 2003).