The Kiwi dream of ‘work hard, live well’ is falling to pieces
Friday, 24 April 2026
A generation of working New Zealanders is losing faith in the country’s core promise: that hard work leads to stability and a better life.
Hamish* arrived home late one evening after enjoying a dinner and a few drinks with friends. But the halo of that good mood was quickly ripped off as he climbed into bed to find his pillow, sheets and mattress completely drenched.
The old fireplace at the head of his bed had begun leaking into his room, soaking everything in the vicinity.
The next morning, he called the property manager of the rental.
“It took her more than a week to get back to me, and she implied there wasn’t much that could be done,” Hamish tells Stuff.
Another week went by before the property manager confirmed that someone would be visiting the house the following week to address the problem.
In the three weeks Hamish waited for the repair, he had to sleep elsewhere every time it rained to avoid sleeping in a wet, cold room.
When the tradie finally arrived, a problem for which little could apparently be done, was repaired in half an hour.
Looking back on this, Hamish’s frustration stems from the landlord and the property manager not seeing his living conditions as a priority.
Having rented through his 20s and now into his 30s, he’s seen this happen time and time again to many of his friends.
“There’s no relationship between the landlord and us,” says Hamish. “We’re just a business transaction.”
Having left university almost a decade ago, Hamish thought he would be in the position of owning his own house at this stage. He did everything right: worked hard at school, got a job, gained experience and saved.
But the promise of building wealth on those tenets did not come easy.
“No one in our group of friends owns their own houses unless they’ve inherited money,” says Hamish.
“It’s making us all feel disillusioned and wonder whether New Zealand really is the right place for us any more.”
The social breakdown
What happened to Hamish isn’t unusual. Talk to enough people and a pattern starts to emerge — not just about housing, but about something deeper. The sense that the basics aren’t working the way they used to.
That when something goes wrong, it’s harder to get a response — from landlords, from employers, from the system more broadly. And over time, that changes how people see the country they live in.
A new report from the Helen Clark Foundation shows that our social cohesion has dropped across every dimension measured: sense of belonging, sense of worth, social inclusion and justice, participation, and acceptance and rejection.
Right now, more than one in four New Zealanders (28%) are feeling alienated from the promise of our country. Almost half of Māori and Pasifika are in this group. So are nearly half of Green voters and seven in ten New Zealand First voters. These are people who disagree on most other things, but they’re increasingly likely to agree that New Zealand isn’t working for them.
On the flip side, only 30% of us feel valued and trust the system to be fair.
The largest group by far (41%) are ambivalent, feeling a moderate sense of belonging, middling trust in institutions, and not really participating in community life. This group contains most of the country’s older homeowners, retirees, and centre-right voters. They are materially comfortable and happy, but not deeply connected to the social fabric. This group is also vulnerable because they’re most likely to feel the pinch when economic conditions worsen or the political discourse becomes more divisive.
Put another way, those in the ambivalent group could quite quickly be bumped into feeling alienated if the country went through an extended economic malaise.
Money and cohesion
Social cohesion is inextricably linked to our economic reality. It’s not just about income. It’s about our ability to build wealth and stability and maintain a stake in our own communities.
Former Prime Minister Helen Clark tells Stuff that the sheer scale of the findings is alarming.
“The size of the alienated group in the survey is quite staggering,” says Clark.
“It’s over a quarter and moving towards a third of the population. That’s a huge worry, because with alienation comes anger, comes despair. It can lash out in ways you can’t predict. It’s particularly fertile territory for populism to stir. And populism exacerbates divisions. It comes up with the wrong answers to complex challenges.”
Much of the growing alienation comes down to living conditions and opportunities in the country.
The housing affordability crisis, Clark says, has devastated people’s incomes, leaving many with very little discretionary spending.
“If you don’t have discretionary spending, you can’t participate in a lot of things. It’s hard to even get the kids to sport, let alone what you might do for yourself.
“Society’s also much more diverse these days and we haven’t really embraced that diversity. [And] in the age of social media, which tends to polarise, people get into their communities and don’t talk to each other as much.”
That polarisation has bedded into the fabric of our politics.
“We’re in a situation now where we ping pong between governments: what one government does, the next one trashes, and it pendulums and keeps swinging wildly and we wonder why we’re not getting ahead,” says Clark.
The idea that New Zealand gives you a fair shot — that if you work hard, you’ll build something — has always been part of how we see ourselves. The report shows that belief is starting to crack.
Fewer than half of us now think hard work actually pays off. For a growing number, it feels like the rules have changed — quietly, but permanently.
This is reflected in Hamish’s experience where, despite having a decent job, he constantly feels that he’s only ever making ends meet. He also worries constantly about what might happen if he’s made redundant or if the workforce changes significantly in the coming years.
“That really reflects the growth of working poor in New Zealand,” says economist Shamubeel Eaqub, who wrote the research.
“There’s been such an expansion of people working their butts off, but it feels like they’re not getting ahead. And the more you experience it, the more you lose faith in this idea.”
This anxiety about work and employment opportunities is growing. The sense that everyone has a fair chance at jobs stands at just 31% overall, down from 39% in 2024.
Renters score lower than homeowners in every social cohesion category. Renters face greater food insecurity, lower happiness, feel less respected in society, are less likely to vote, and are less likely to feel they belong in their neighbourhood.
This matters because more Kiwis are renting for longer than they did in the past. In the 1970s, the average Kiwi would buy their first home in their mid-20s. Today, the average Aucklander will only buy a home at 37.
Eaqub says these issues become intergenerational as renters have children, who then go on to rent themselves.
“It’s not so much about renting,” he says. “It’s just that we’ve got so many people in very strained financial circumstances. And in our analysis, we found this is probably the biggest driver of why people feel disconnected and discontented.”
The gap that needs to be closed
Despite the pervasive economic anxiety and frustration, the report uncovers a critical silver lining: 80% of us still believe democracy is a valid way to govern, and 81% express pride in the country.
The challenge now is bridging the gap between those enduring ideals and the reality of how citizens feel they are being treated by their government and institutions.
Bridging this divide won’t come from government policy alone, especially in an era of such adversarial politics.
As Eaqub and Clark note, the fix must be multi-faceted. It will require a deliberate effort to look past the polarised noise and remember the threads that bind us. If the Kiwi ‘fair go’ is to survive, it must be something we rebuild together – not just an ideal we hope to find.'
*Hamish is not his real name.
In the coming weeks, we’ll be running a series in six parts on the breakdown in social cohesion in New Zealand and what needs to be done to repair it. We will be looking into who is affected by these issues. What can be done to resolve them. And whether change will come from our politicians or elsewhere.
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