The last “snapshot of the nation”, taken in 2006, was of a very different New Zealand.
Helen Clark was in her third term as PM; sign language was made an official language; the Kahui twins died as a result of ongoing abuse; and Christchurch was best known as ‘the garden city’.
The 2011 earthquakes in that region were the reason last year’s census was delayed, making this year’s findings all the more timely.
As at Tuesday March 5, the national population was 4,242,048. That’s understood to have increased to nearly 4.5 million in the months since, as it goes up by one person every seven minutes and 42 seconds.
The gender breakdown is roughly even, with 49 per cent male, 51 per cent female. Women outnumber men in all age groups from 25 to 29 years onwards, and this most pronounced in the oldest age groups: of those aged 85 years plus, 64.3 per cent were female.
For an at-a-glance view, Statistics New Zealand has prepared an infographic of New Zealand as a village of 100 people, but the picture painted by the 2013 census is of a nation that’s not getting any younger.
The median age is 38 – two years older than the 2006 findings, and almost ten years older since 1981. That’s because there are fewer children younger than 15, and more people aged between 50 and 69. (If your Year 9 maths is a bit rusty, median means half are younger, and half older, than this age.)
On the other hand, the Māori population is younger. The census findings point to there being almost 600,000 people of Māori ethnicity living in New Zealand – nearly six per cent more than in 2006, and in line with total population growth of 5.3 per cent between the two studies. The median age is just 24 years.
Nearly three-quarters of the population identify as being of European ethnicity. That’s up from 2006, but it’s probably due to fewer people choosing to identify as ‘New Zealanders’.
Pacific people make up 7.4 per cent of the population, a slight increase from 6.9 per cent in 2006. And almost one in eight people living in New Zealand are Asian – a big jump from one in 11 in 2006. Nearly two-thirds of that number live in Auckland, where the ratio is one in five.
Hindu is now the fourth most common language spoken in New Zealand, after English, Māori, and Samoan. The percentage of people speaking Te Reo has fallen slightly, though younger people are more likely to speak it than older people.
While there are more actual dwellings, few households own their homes (and nearly one in four households is a person living alone). The rate of home ownership has fallen to just under 65 per cent, compared with almost 67 per cent in 2006.
The number of unoccupied dwellings has increased sharply since 2006, by more than 16 per cent. Almost 40 per cent of this increase was in Canterbury.
But despite the earthquakes, the region’s population has grown by more than 17,000 people since 2006, but primarily in areas outside of Christchurch, like Ashburton and Hurunui. The population of Christchurch city itself has dropped 2 per cent to about 341,000.
Internet and cellphone usage at home has risen in the past seven years, while landline access has fallen. But a not inconsiderable 24,135 households don’t have access to any telecommunication systems at home: that’s no landline, cellphone, Internet access, or “fax”.
Employment is down slightly, with 2,001,006 employed adults on census night. The number of employed people aged from 15 to 24 has fallen by just over 45,000, meaning that age group has an unemployment rate of 18.4 per cent – up from 13.3 in 2006.
The median income was $28,500. Almost 40 per cent of adults have a personal income of $20,000 or less, and 5.9 per cent have a personal income of over $100,000. More than twice as many men as women have an income over $70,000.
But we’re more qualified than ever, with just under 80 per cent of adults holding a formal qualification, up about five per cent from 2006. Of those with a bachelor’s degree or equivalent as their highest qualification, 42.2 per cent were men, and 57.8, women. There’s been a massive 56.4 per cent increase in the number of Māori holding a bachelor’s degree or higher – and 19 per cent of Māori are participating in full- or part-time study.
All the data is available on the Stats NZ website, and there’s a lot more to come. Next week will see the release of the counts of all the census topics, like religion, tobacco smoking and relationship status. More and more detailed breakdowns will keep coming until 2015 – when, presumably, they stop counting, and start preparing for the next one.
Cover photo by Flickr user James Cridland