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Recently I posted the age profiles of Australian Born Chinese (ABCs) – as well as the age profile of Chinese born in China and Hong Kong (see previous post).

Today I want to zoom in on the ABCs – because there are heaps of them on the younger spectrum of the age profile. And many are in fact the children of migrants from China.

An important question for Christian ministries trying to reach out to them is: will these kids be around here in Australia in the future? or will their parents return to China with these kids in the near future? Yes, there may be heaps of younger ABCs around right now – but will they stay? or will they go? This will significantly shape what church ministries and uni will look like in the future.

This next graph shows you the age profile of ABCs from both the 2006 ABS census (green line), and the 2011 ABS census (red line). This allows us to compare the age profile of the ABC community at these two points in recent history. Click on the graph for a larger version.

Have the ABC kids in the 2006 census stuck around? or have their parents taken them overseas? The shape of the green graph certainly has similarities to the red graph. But what I have done with this next graph is aged the 2006 green line by five years, and overlaid it on the 2011 red line.

It seems that on the whole, younger ABCs from 2006 have actually stuck around in Australia during the past five years. In fact the age profile suffers its first decrease only at the 22-year old mark – presumably as some ABCs finish uni and get jobs overseas. This trend suggests that the huge numbers we are currently seeing on the left hand side of the age profile, will translate to equally huge numbers of ABCs in our high school and university ministries down the track (more on this in our next post).

This also says a lot about the families that these kids are born into: on the whole, families who have children look like they tend to stay on in Australia. This stability is significant for church ministries looking to connect with these younger families, and minister to their kids. It means that new family that you can see coming out of the hospital with their ABC baby is almost certain to still be around in five years time.

So – how are your ministries preparing for the future?