Funding provided by the Australian Research Council as a 2015 Discovery Project Grant

Prof James Raymer is the First Named Chief Investigator and works on this project with Tom Wilson from The University of Queensland

Australia has one of the largest percentages of immigrant populations in the developed world with a highly regulated system of immigration control and regular censuses to track their changes over time. This study is about understanding the specific contributions made by international migration to demographic change in Australia from 1981 to 2016.

To do so, we have developed methodologies to create a complete, consistent and detailed account of population change in Australia. This account includes the demographic components of immigration, emigration, origin-destination-specific internal migration, births and deaths --- all by age and sex for 19 immigrant populations across 47 harmonised Statistical Divisions and/or 11 aggregated regions based. The consistent and detailed data provides the means for assessing the specific contributions of migration across geographic areas in Australia and for studying the dynamic population movements that produced them.

Below are a list of current publications and data sets from the project. More papers and data sets are in the process of being produced and will be added once they become available.

Publications

• Raymer, J., Bai, X. & Liu, N. The dynamic complexity of Australia’s immigration and emigration flows from 1981 to 2016. J Pop Research (2020).
• Wilson T and Raymer J (2017) The changing shape of Australia’s overseas-born population. Population and Societies 545, 1-4.
• Raymer J and Baffour B (2018) Subsequent migration of immigrants within Australia, 1981-2016. Population Research and Policy Review 37(6), 1053-1077.
• Raymer J, Shi Y, Guan Q, Baffour B and Wilson T (2018) The sources and diversity of immigrant population change in Australia, 1981-2011. Demography 55(5), 1777-1802.
• Baffour B and Raymer J (2019) Estimating multiregional survivorship probabilities for sparse data: An application to immigrant populations in Australia, 1981–2011. Demographic Research 40(18), 463-502. [add link to paper]
• Raymer J, Bai X, Liu N and Wilson T (forthcoming) Estimating a consistent and detailed time series of immigration and emigration for sub-state regions of Australia. Applied Spatial Analysis and Policy.
  • Estimated data: Annual immigration and emigration totals by country of birth and harmonised Statistical Division, 1981-2016 (ZIP, 910KB)
  • Estimated data: Annual immigration and emigration by country of birth, age, sex, and harmonised Statistical Division, 1981-2016 (ZIP, 48MB)

Project Documents

• Creating Population-based Consistent Geography over 1981-2011, prepared by Qing Guan, School of Demography, Australian National University, 16 November 2018 revision v2.