Census updates: Housing, sexuality, income - what latest data shows about how Kiwis live
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New details about how Kiwis live have been revealed with the release of Census data.
The information released today includes data on Kiwis’ housing, what they earn, their sexuality, how they get to or from work and school, smoking rates and religious affiliation.
The Census is a nationwide, five-yearly headcount of everyone in New Zealand and where they are living or staying. The most recent survey was carried out in March last year.
STORY CONTINUES AFTER LIVE BLOG
How we get to work
Vera Alves
Travelling by car, truck or van was the most common way to get to work in 2023. But when it came to using public transport – this was most common among workers in Wellington (19.1%). In Auckland, 9.5% of people travelled to work by public transport.
Vera Alves
Stats NZ's new platform (announced in a press release by Minister Bayly yesterday) Aotearoa Data Explorer is back up and working again.
Dramatic drop in telephone use
Vera Alves
Telephone use - or landlines – has dropped dramatically in recent years and is now around half the rate of what it was in 2018. In 2023, 31% of households reported having a landline – compared with 62.5% at the time of the 2018 Census.
Chatham Islands is the only area where landline use remains high – at 73.1%.
Two-thirds of homes have a heat pump
Vera Alves
There has been a substantial increase in the use of energy-efficient heating – with around two-thirds of private dwellings (66.8%) having a heat pump, up from 47.3% in 2018.
New Zealand's largest iwi
Vera Alves
More than 350,000 people affiliate with one of New Zealand's three largest iwi. These are Ngāpuhi with 184,470 people (19.3%), Ngāti Porou with 102,480 (10.7%) and Ngāi Tahu with 84,969 (8.9%).
More than half of New Zealanders have no religion
Vera Alves
For the first time since the New Zealand census began to collect religious affiliations, more than half of the population had no religion (at the time of the 2023 Census).
The number of people who identify as Christian dropped from 36.5% of the population in 2018 to 32.3% in the latest Census. The other largest religious groupings were Hindu (2.9%) and Islam (1.5%).
Most people have internet access
Vera Alves
Nine in ten people had access to the internet in 2023. However, access varies by area and was lower in more rural districts. Buller district on the West Coast, and Ruapehu district in the central North Island, had the lower internet access rates at 79.9% and 80.9% respectively.
Gisborne: Increase in mould, dampness after Cyclone Gabrielle
Vera Alves
The only region in New Zealand where residents reported an increase in dampness and mould in their homes was Gisborne. All other regions reported a decrease.
Stats NZ principal analyst Rosemary Goodyear said the region was hit particularly hard during the cyclone events of 2023 and did not follow the national trend.
Gisborne reported the highest rate of dampness at least some of the time - from 26.4% in 2018 to 30% in 2023. Reports of mould over A4 size increased from 21.3% to 23.4% over this time
Fewer damp, mouldy homes
Vera Alves
Data from the 2023 Census shows a decrease in the number of people who report living with dampness in their homes – from 21.5% in 2018 to 18.1% in 2023.
For mould, one in seven homes in 2023 (14%) had mould larger than the size of an A4 piece of paper - compared to 1 in 6 or 16.9% in 2018.
Auckland: Lowest home ownership
Vera Alves
Auckland had the country's lowest home ownership rates in 2023 of all regions – at 59.5% - which was largely unchanged from the 2018 rate of 59.4%.
Vera Alves
Stats NZ's new platform (announced in a press release by Minister Bayly yesterday) Aotearoa Data Explorer has crashed and is unable to handle the interest in census data.
Personal income & home ownership
Vera Alves
The median income of working New Zealanders is $41,500.
Around two-thirds of New Zealand households (66%) own their own home or hold it in a trust – this is a small uptick from the 2018 figure of 64.5%.
Stats NZ principal analyst Rosemary Goodyear said although the increase was small, it was "a reversal of the falling rates we have seen since home ownership peaked in the early 1990s."
Our diverse population: 30% of people in New Zealand born overseas
Vera Alves
In 2023, 28.8% of people who completed the Census were born overseas – a slight increase from the 2018 figure of 27.4%.
Like 2018, the most common birthplaces were:
- England: 4.2% of the total population
- China: 2.9%
- India: 2.9%
The number of people born in the Philippines increased markedly between 2013 and 2023 – from 37,299 (0.9%) in 2013 to 99,264 (2%) in 2023.
Auckland is the most ethnically diverse region. While half the population is European, it was the region with the highest proportion of people with Asian and Pacific ethnicities.
More than 200,000 reo speakers
Vera Alves
The number of people who speak te reo Māori increased 15% between 2018 and 2023.
Gisborne and Northland had the highest proportion of reo speakers at 16.9% and 10.1% respectively. These regions also had the highest proportion of Māori populations at 54.8% and 37.4% respectively.
The question about in the Census asks whether the person can have a conversation about a lot of everyday things in te reo. In 2023, 4.3% of people said they could.
There has also been a 7.4% increase in users of New Zealand’s other official language – sign language – since 2018.
Where we work: 1 in 6 working from home
Vera Alves
The number of people working from home most of the time increased almost 60% between 2018 and 2023.
Wellington and Auckland had the highest growth since 2018 in the number of people who mostly work from home – with the numbers in both regions more the doubling.
In Auckland in 2023, 158,658 people mostly worked from home (up from 72,099 in 2018). In Wellington, this number increased from 24,909 people to 56,016.
Stats NZ’s Rosemary Goodyear said the Census was taking at the start of 2023, providing a snapshot of the impact Covid-19 had on influencing more people to work from home.
Smoking rates almost halve
Vera Alves
Cigarette smoking rates have almost halved since 2013. Data from Census 2023 shows in 2023, 7.7% (310, 809) of the population were regular smokers compared with 15.1% (463,194) in 2013.
Gisborne had the highest proportion of regular smokers at 12%. Tasman had the lowest proportion of regular smokers at 6.3%.
Northland had the highest proportion of ex-smokers at 32.8% and Auckland has the highest proportion of adults who have never smoked regularly (73.6%).
Most LGBTIQ+ people in Wellington
Vera Alves
Wellington City has the highest proportion of adults who identified in Census 2023 as belonging to the LGBTIQ+ community (11.3%).
After Wellington, cities with the highest proportions were Dunedin (7.3%), Christchurch (6%), Palmerston North (5.8%) and Hamilton (5.6%).
At 4.9%, Auckland had less than half the proportion of people who identified as LGBTIQ+ as Wellington. Within Auckland, Waitematā had the highest proportion of LGBTIQ+ adults at 12%.
Across all adults aged 15 years and old, almost 4.9% report in the Census as belonging to the LGBTIQ+ community. This is one in 20 adults.
There were 47,631 people who identified as homosexual (gay or lesbian); 78,300 who identified as bisexual; 19,026 whose sexual identity was not classified in the Census.
In 2023, 0.7% of the Census population (aged 15 and old) were transgender. This included 5013 transgender males, 5736 transgender females and 15, 348 transgender people of another gender.
This data shows 15,039 or 0.4% stated they knew they were born with a variation of sex characteristics.
Other findings include:
- 0.4% of the Census population reported a gender other than male or female – a category sometimes referred to as “non-binary.”
- People who had another gender were on average younger than the general population – 24.8 years compared to 38.1 years.
- LGBTIQ+ including people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, and intersex.
What the Census data will tell us this morning
Vera Alves
The information about to be released this morning includes data on Kiwis’ housing, what they earn, their sexuality, how they get to or from work and school, smoking rates and religious affiliation.
New Zealand’s population growing, diversifying, and ageing
Vera Alves
In case you missed it, a previous data release in May, from the same Census, showed us what part New Zealand has the fastest growing population. You can read our report below.
Latest Census data to be released today
Vera Alves
Kia ora and welcome to the Herald's live coverage of the latest Census data release.
STORY CONTINUES
New Zealand’s population grew about 6.3% and is getting older and more diverse, Statistics New Zealand revealed in May. That tranche of the 2023 Census data showed the oldest section of the population is in the North Island, while the territorial authorities growing the fastest are in the South Island.
It showed that since the 2018 Census, New Zealand’s population has grown by almost 300,000 people. The 2023 results show most people live in the North Island, and our population continues to age and diversify ethnically.
The number of people with Māori descent is rapidly growing, with almost one million claiming ancestry – 12.5% more than the previous 2018 Census.
Our population
The 2023 Census population count – which includes people who were in New Zealand on Census night – was 4,993,923 – almost 300,000 more people than the 2018 Census.
Population growth was slower between 2018 and 2023.
Most people lived in the North Island (76.3%, or three in four people) and one-third (1.66 million) lived in Auckland.
Populations have grown across all regions. The population growth rate for Auckland was 5.4%, almost half of the growth rate for the Tasman region (10%). The slowest population growth was in Wellington (2.8%) and Southland (2.7%).
The fastest-growing territorial authority (cities or districts) were Selwyn and Queenstown. Stats NZ said the slower population growth could be attributed to closed borders and slower migration, and low fertility rates.
Age data
New Zealand’s population is getting older, with the average median age rising from 37.4 years in 2018 to 38.1 years.
Thames-Coromandel is the oldest area in New Zealand – where 34% of people are over 65. In Kaikōura and Kāpiti, 27% of the population is over 65.
The youngest population is the Manurewa local board area in Auckland, where 24% of the population is aged under 15.