Life expectancy continues to rise, however gains slowing; Māori narrowing gap but large disparity remains

Tuesday, 20 April 2021

New Zealand's population is growing, and ageing at a rapid rate.

New Zealanders’ life expectancy at birth continues to rise, with the figure for males getting to 80, but the improvement has slowed from previous decades.

Figures published by Statistics New Zealand on Tuesday show the 80-year life expectancy for males is up by six months since 2012-14, and by 2 years since 2005-07.

Female life expectancy has risen to 83.5 years, up 0.3 and 1.3 years over the same time periods.

The data is based on death rates in the 2017-2019 period.

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Life expectancy at birth was 73.4 years for Māori males in 2017–2019 (up 3.1 years from 2005–2007), and 77.1 years for Māori females (up 2 years from 2005–2007).

Our life expectancy at birth continues to rise, to 80 years for males and 83.5 years for females.

For the “European or other” ethnic group, life expectancy for males in 2017-19 was 81 and 84.5 for females.

For the Pacific group, male life expectancy was 75.4 years and female life expectancy 79 years. Asian males had a life expectancy of 85.1 years and Asian females were at 87.9 years.

Life expectancy has improved significantly since the mid-20th century. In 1950-52 it was 71.3 years for females and 67.2 years for males.

Professor Ngaire Kerse, the Joyce Cook Chair in Ageing Well at Auckland University, said much of the increase in life expectancy was due to improvements in cardiovascular disease mortality and management.

“It’s improvements in public health measures and health service delivery,” she said.

The reason for the lower life expectancy of Pacific people and Māori was complex, and included such factors as disparities in early life outcomes and midlife socio-economic achievements.

For instance, disparities in education were related to life expectancy, as were incomes throughout people’s lifetimes, Kerse said.

”We need to address the disparities in life expectancy… addressing those disparities has to be an all-of-system effort.”

It was probably necessary to wait for the next set of life expectancy figures for an indication of the significance of the slowdown shown in the latest data, Kerse said.

”But maybe we’re reaching that flat bit of the curve.” When things could get better they did tend to get better at a fairly sustainable rate.

”I think our health systems are fairly well developed for looking after chronic disease. And early life, in the way we care for mothers and babies, is in the main fairly good, for a developed nation.”

The Stats NZ data showed life expectancy at birth was lowest in the most deprived areas of the country – at 78.5 years for females and 74.1 years for males.

The highest life expectancies were in the least deprived areas – at 87.5 years for females and 84.7 years for males.

Stats NZ data shows life expectancy barely improved at all for males between the 1960-1962 and 1975-1977 periods - going up just 0.6 years over the whole of that time, and actually declining slightly in the first half of the 1960s.

In contrast, male life expectancy rose by 8.4 years between 1985-1987 and 2012-2014. During the same time, life expectancy for females rose 6.1 years.

The gap between males and females widened to 6.5 years in the 1975-1977 period, but in the latest figures is down to just 3.5 years.