Greek migration to Australia is mainly a post-war affair. Buoyed by the ‘populate or perish’ mantra of the times and the Migration Restriction Act commonly called the White Australia Policy, boatloads started arriving in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s.

After exhausting the supply of Anglo-Celtic and northern European migrants, attention then turned to the now deemed sufficiently ‘white’ southern Mediterranean peoples. There was a backlog of Greeks, Italians, Yugoslavs, Maltese and other groups only too ready to meet the demands of unskilled labour of Australia’s growing economy.

Uncovering longevity trends through obituary analysis

During this period over 200,000 Greeks arrived with more than half settling in Victoria. There was also a large degree of repatriation but most ending up staying for the long-term. In many ways they were quite a homogeneous lot, overwhelmingly rural folk with very few having more than a primary school albeit incomplete education. There are many ways to study this group and all approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. For those that arrived in Melbourne, an insightful approach is by looking at death notices in Neos Kosmos.

Neos Kosmos is effective as it’s a newspaper familiar with most first generation households. The placement of obituaries has a very high uptake by this generation. This is very important as large sample sizes of any studied group ensure that the statistical results are both representative and credible. Interestingly, this phenomenon of widespread obituary use in newspapers appears to be a very Greek thing and one struggles to find something equivalent in other ethnic newspapers.

Back in August 2024, I looked at a study of around 1,200 obituaries between mid-August 2023 to mid-August 2024 of post-war Greek migrants that were born in Greece or territories that contained Greeks in order to determine their average life expectancy. Anyone Australian born was excluded. The results showed that the average life expectancy was 85.3 years, almost one and a half years higher than the average Australian and two and a half years higher than those in Greece. So there is something to be said about this generation and its habits that are contributing to its longevity. Home cooked meals, olive oil, eating in family settings, fasting and gardening are important factors – a conundrum that’s defied experts as this generation – having moved to Australia also acquired the purchasing power to afford and consume meat on a daily basis, as many did.

I decided to extend my obituary study to a longer time period, 2010-2024, to see how the life expectancy of this generation evolved over time but also to see if there were any regional variations depending on their place of origin. It involved a sample size of over 15,000 persons.

What we see from the data, is that over a 15 year period, the life expectancy of post-war first generation Greek migrants has increased by almost six and a half years, from 79.43 to 85.73 years. This is an exceptional result and there are also many other contributing factors. Firstly Australia has a first class health system, universal health care ensues that those with critical conditions get immediate attention. Over time there are medical advances in therapies, procedures and medications which assist in prolonging people’s lives.

One also shouldn’t underestimate the increase in medical literacy even in non-English speaking ethnic communities. Information on health through various media outlets and government departments is available in numerous languages. Furthermore, people are making both forced and unforced lifestyle changes as they get older. Although these figures do not capture any data on the reason of death or the quality of life in the final years, the upward trajectory of life expectancy is a positive development. In Table 2, over a fifteen year period, do we see any variation in life expectancy with respect to the place of birth?

Regional variations and socioeconomic factors in Greek longevity

As Table 3 shows ‘Islander Greeks’ that migrated to Australia post-War, with the exception of Cretans, appear to have had a higher life expectancy than ‘mainlander Greeks’. Cypriots, Aegean and Ionian Islanders feature in the top five with the highest life expectancy. The top two spots are occupied by Greeks born in Turkey or Egypt, no doubt there’s a socioeconomic dimension to this.

Life expectancy is also related to affluence and education levels. Those with greater means have better access to higher quality food and medical treatment and often engage in less hazardous employment The average Egyptian Greek had a higher standard of living than the average Egyptian. With the Greeks of Turkey, those born in Istanbul/Constantinople and Izmir/Smyrna show a slightly higher life expectancy than those born on the islands of Imbros and Tenedos. With respect to Greece itself, do we see variation in the place of origin level? The table below shows the administrative regions (nomoi) that have the top 5 and bottom 5 life expectancies.

Four of the top 5 spots for the highest average life expectancy are islands. Number one is the region of Samos which also contains Ikaria, the island of longevity. However, in this sample more than 95 per cent were from the island of Samos itself. One can only suspect that islander lifestyle and consuming more seafood relative to red meat are playing some role. It is interesting to see the mountainous, landlocked Peloponessian region of Arcadia defying the trend and coming in at number two.

The bottom five regions are also interesting. It includes, Piraeus, the working class industrial port of Athens. All the other four regions, with my birthplace, Kardista being the lowest, are all agriculturally fertile regions of Greece.

In conclusion, obituaries are just one of the many analytical tools that can be used to used to monitor and study post-War Greek migration to Australia. It is also encouraging to see that generation making lifestyle choices that are improving life expectancy outcomes.

Dr Nick Dallas is a researcher and board member of the Greek Community of Melbourne