Life expectancy in several Pacific Island countries remains “below average” in comparison to global averages, despite a significant increase in average life expectancy since 1960.
“Average life expectancy across the Pacific is 68.8 years, up from 52.7 in 1960. That’s a significant increase, but it is well below the rate of progress that middle-income countries as a group have achieved,” according to a recently published Devpolicy Blog article.
The authors of the article, titled ‘Life expectancy in the Pacific, and the case of Naoero’, say that the average increase for Pacific Island countries was 16 years, while for lower-middle income countries the average increase was 23 years and upper-middle income countries 19 years.
However, they point out that one Pacific Island nation was particularly falling behind.
“In 1960 Naoero’s life expectancy was (57.9yrs) above the upper-middle-income average (54.4yrs),” Australian National University’s Stephen Howes and The University of Papua New Guinea’s Albert Prabhakar Gudapati, write.
“Now [Naoero] is below even the low-income average (67.9yrs). Naoero has gone from having the Pacific’s third-highest life expectancy in 1960 to having its lowest in 2023. And it is the lowest by a long way: four years.”
Howes and Gudapati also noted that Fiji, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia had life expectancy fall below average since 1960, while the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu moved from below average to above average.
“At the other, more positive end of the performance spectrum, Cook Islands has gone from having an average life expectancy to having the highest in the Pacific.”
Other Pacific Island countries that have below average life expetancy are Kiribati, Papua New Guiea and Palau.
The authors aruge that Naoero could benefit from migration rights to Australia, similar to what the Cook Islands and Niue have with New Zealand: unlimited migration rights to Aotearoa and who are also entitled to a New Zealand passport.
“While Naoero is a high-income country now, it endured a severe decline in income and consequent hardships during its ‘riches to rags’ story of the 1980s,1990s and 2000s,” they wrote.
“More than one in five [Dei-Naoero] adults [have] diabetes, among the highest rates in the world. Some argue that Naoero is still paying the price for phosphate mining, including in terms of poor air quality.
“To its credit, Naoero is actively trying to improve the health of its citizens, with extensive exercise promotion campaigns.
“More controversially, last year the country took the radical step of handing over management of its health system to a foreign company, the UAE company Global Mission Support Services.”
They say it was too early to say if the Global Mission Support Services agreement would make a difference, but running a health system in a small and remote island country would be a difficult task.
“Unlike the other high-income countries of the Pacific, Naoero’s citizens have no open migration pathway; a small allocation under Australia’s ballot-based Pacific Engagement Visa is the only preferential access they have. This means that overseas health care is both difficult to obtain and expensive.
Howes and Gudapati argue that while having a Cook Islands and Niue-type migration deal with NZ would not be a “complete answer”, Naoero could “benefit significantly, not just economically but in terms of health outcomes, by negotiating a similar deal with Australia”.
