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Over a quarter of current Australians born overseas: statistics

Xinhua, March 30, 2016 Adjust font size:

More than a quarter of all living Australians were born overseas -- the highest proportion in more than 120 years -- according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Wednesday.

Twenty-eight percent of Australia's current population was born overseas, and according to Beidar Cho from the ABS, the figure is a result of different generations of migrants all living in Australia at the same time.

Cho said young migrants who came to Australia from Europe after the second world war would be entering the later stages of their life, while migrants who have come from Asia and the Middle East in more recent times would also be adding to the figure.

"Australia has traditionally had a high proportion of migrants, but we've now hit a peak not seen since the late 1800s," Cho said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Migrants born in Italy, for example, had a median age of 64.7 years in 2005. This increased to 69.3 years in 2015 -- indicating a drop in recent migration and the aging of existing migrants.

"On the other hand, migrants from our Asian neighbors, such as India, have seen a reduction in median age from 37 years in 2005 to 33.4 years in 2015."

According to the ABS, the percentage of Australian born overseas have increased every year over the past 15 years, with huge increases in the number of Indian-Australians and Chinese-Australians over the last decade.

"The number of Australian residents born in India has almost tripled over the last 10 years and residents born in China have more than doubled in this time," Cho said.

Those born in Britain currently make up the highest proportion of migrant Australians with 5.1 percent of the population, but they are followed by New Zealanders (2.6 percent) and Chinese-Australians (2.0 percent of the population). Endit