Of our coverage of New Zealand in 2030 this week, two trends have emerged: in the future, we’re going to be an increasingly elderly and more ethnically diverse country. This presents challenges, especially for rural and provincial towns, and if we’re to prepare for them, there are questions we should be asking of ourselves now. But why tell, when you can show?

This visualisation was made from data and projections from Statistics New Zealand. A few caveats...

There are two sources for the ethnicity projections: 1991-2001 data is from the 2001 census, and the 2006, 2013 and 2026 data is from the National Ethnic Population Projections update in 2010. As the 2013 figures were projected from a 2006 base, it doesn’t reflect the actual population or census results of 2013.

You’ll note that the totals add up to more than 100 per cent – that’s because Statistics New Zealand lets people identify with more than one ethnic group. In the last census more than half of Maori identified with two or more ethnic groups, for example. That makes this data a bit confusing, but makes the point that in the future those lines are only going to be more blurred.

‘European and Other’ are grouped together because of changes to questions and categories over time; ‘New Zealander’ was introduced as an option since 2006.

The data that shows demographic change by age was sourced from National Population Projections released in 2012, from a 2011 base.

Cover image by Doug Gaylard.

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