AIHW disability report
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), has released a new report ‘Disability in Australia: trends in prevalence, education, employment and community living’.
This bulletin provides an overview of disability trends over two decades, including trends in need for and receipt of assistance, with specific basic activities of daily life. It also examines the trends in three major areas of people with a disability: education, employment and community living.
From 1981 to 2003 the number of people with a disability, who need help with basic daily activities of self care, mobility, or communication increased from 453,000 to 1.2 million, and the number is projected to increase to 1.5 million by 2010.
“These increases were due to a combination of population growth, population ageing, and improvement in diagnosis and data collections, and do not reflect a significant change in the underlying rates of disability,” AIHW spokesman, Dr Wen, said.
Between 1998 and 2003, there was an increase of 93,900 people needing help with core activities. Most of these people relied mainly on family or friends for assistance.
“But there were still around 71,000 people who need help with basic daily activities, who had no assistance at all,” said Dr Wen.
AIHW catalogue number AUS 103 is available at:
