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# Mortality was about a quarter higher for Australians in same-sex relationships
- URL: https://www.coios.me/mortality-was-about-a-quarter-higher-for-australians-in/
- Published: 2026-09-20T00:06:23.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-20T00:42:10.000Z
- Description: Australian census records linked to death registrations for 2011 to 2023 show all-cause mortality about a quarter higher among adults in same-sex than different-sex relationships, and external-cause mortality two to three times higher, both before and after the 2017 marriage reform.
- Author: Daniel Ryan
- Tags: Healthcare today, Inequalities in health and length of life, What linked data reveals, Australia, #peer-reviewed, #new, #item, #source-2026-09

Census records linked to death registrations followed 54,529 adults in same-sex relationships and 7.9 million in different-sex relationships from 2011 to 2023, weighted to balance age, education and household income. All-cause mortality was about a quarter higher for both women (HR 1.25) and men (HR 1.24) in same-sex relationships, and external-cause mortality was higher still (HR 2.56 and 1.96). The external-cause gap among women narrowed from HR 3.40 before the 2017 legalisation of same-sex marriage to 2.04 after, but remained elevated in both periods.

*Why it is interesting: A whole-population mortality estimate for a group that most national statistics cannot identify, available only through census-to-death linkage and resting on relationship status as the proxy.*

Source

[American journal of public health, 17 September 2026](https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2026.308712?ref=coios.me)

DOI

10.2105/ajph.2026.308712

Type

Peer-reviewed article

Design

Census-linked national cohort, 54,529 adults in same-sex vs 7,923,328 in different-sex relationships, Cox models with inverse probability weighting, 2011-2023

Verdict

New finding

Driver

[Inequalities in health and length of life](https://www.coios.me/d-health-inequality/)

Driver

[What linked data reveals](https://www.coios.me/d-linked-data/)