The Great Grandparents Study

FinDem?s research project has commenced to study the age profile of living generations of Australian parents and children. We have posted a brief summary of the first stage of simulations in Resources under Research Papers. These are based on the population data as at the last Census in 2001. They are back projections using historical mortality and age specific fertility, following the nuptial mother and maternal grandmother and great grandmother family line. This will understate the number of children, parents, grandparents and great grandparents because it does not include paternal and step-parent kinship lines. There is also some clustering of results at outer extremes, as we do not yet have historical distribution of family size data, just averages.

A brief summary of what we have found so far as at 2001 Census data, is as follows:

* There were 882,881 great grandchildren with great grandmothers and they have an average age of 6 years 8 months and with 50% between ages 2 and 9. They had 111,378 maternal great grandmothers with average age 75.

* There were 5,099,355 grand children with grand mothers and they have average age of 12 years 10 months and with 50% between ages 5 and 18. They had 1,427,619 maternal grand mothers with average age of 63.

* The total population average age was 35 for men and 37 for women

You can compare life expectancy for different generations using the historical mortality used in this project at Research Centre under Lifetimes Calculators then Generations Lifetimes. We will bring you progressive news of the Grandparents Study as it develops.

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