Indigenous population projects in mining regions: dividend or dependency?

Population projections are increasingly recognised by mining companies and indigenous representative organisations alike as a vital tool of regional planning in remote areas in the context of agreement-making because they focus attention on the likely scale and nature of future needs in what are inevitably dynamic social and economic environments. From a policy perspective, the significant output from projection is a measure of how the composition of population by age is likely to change over time. This paper shows that structural ageing is occurring among indigenous populations in four remote mining regions where Rio Tinto has major operations. While younger adults are entering a phase of potential demographic dividend as the share of population in working-ages expands, they are often less well-equipped for mainstream employment participation than their older adult counterparts who are transitioning into aged dependency. This raises issues regarding the urgency that should be afforded to efforts aimed at raising indigenous skill levels via education and training in order to maximise potential social and economic returns.