Progress for Maori

An interesting paper by Lindsay Mitchell that looks at how key economic and social indicators for Mapori have changed over the decades. The points the paper stresses is that there has been huge gains, even though outcomes are still generally less favourable than Europeans. Some key data points:

• Life expectancy increased from mid 50s in 1951 to 73 for Maori males and 77 for Maori females
• Child mortality dropped from 51% in 1886 to 1% today
• Infant mortality dropped from 9% in 1945 to 0.5% today
• TB rates has dropped from 13 per 100,000 in 1997 to 4 per 100,000
• Cardiovascular disease mortality rates dropped from 700 per 100,000 in 1997 to 400 for Maori males
• Heart failure mortality rates dropped from 22 per 100,000 in 1997 5 for Maori males
• Daily smoking rates for 15 year olds down from 25% in 1999 for Maori males to 5% and from 35% to 10% for Maori females
• Leaving school with no qualifications down from 40% in 2006 to 25%

The data brings up an interesting issue – what is more important – the absolute improvement in outcomes, or the gap between groups?