New Zealanders

The number of people who wrote in their ethnicity as “New Zealand” in the 2006 census was 429,429 – three times as many as expected and five times as many as in 2001.

Now I wasn’t one of those, but I am fascinated by the demography of those stating that as their ethnicity.  So I read through the 33 page report from Stats NZ.

No Right Turn doesn’t seem to have got past the summary page by concluding “they’re overwhelmingly dead white males”.  He really should have gone through the full report.

In terms of gender, yes there are more males than females but it is only 51.9% Male which is a light year away from overwhelmingly males.

Then in terms of age, their median age was 40.2 compared to 35.9 for the total population but part of this is a skew by number of kids in each group.  Stats concluded that people aged 35 – 53 were most likely to say their ethnicity was New Zealander.  Hardly dead.

11% of those who wrote in their ethnicity as “New Zealander” are of Maori descent.

Not surprisingly 93% of this group were born in NZ compared to 77% for the total population.

Also people are less religious in this group – only 58% have a religion comp to 63% overall.

They are also more educated with only 19% having no qualifications compared to 25% of all NZers.  They are also more likely to have a Bachelors degree.  This also mean they are way more likely to be earning over $40,000 a year and are also more likely to be in employment.

It will be interesting to observe how things change in the 2011 census.