About 28% of the Australian population live in regional and remote areas—areas outside Australia’s major cities. There are many positive aspects about living in regional and remote areas, including higher levels of life satisfaction compared with those in urban areas (Wilkins 2015), increased community interconnectedness and social cohesion, and higher levels of community participation, volunteering and informal support from their communities (Ziersch et al. 2009). However, Australians living in these areas face unique challenges due to their geographic isolation, and often have poorer health and welfare outcomes than those living in major cities.
For further information on how the statistics reported here were calculated see Technical notes.