Births driving New Zealand population growth for the first time since 2013

Tuesday, 17 August 2021

New Zealand’s population is still rising, but the rate of growth has slowed sharply

New Zealand’s population growth slowed sharply in the year to the end of June 2021, as Covid-19 border closures and travel restrictions led to a big fall in immigration.

The estimated population provisionally grew by 32,400 people, or 0.6 per cent, to 5.12 million, Stats NZ said on Tuesday. The number of people aged 15-39 fell.

Natural increase – births minus deaths – was the main driver of the growth for the first time since the year to June 2013. The latest year also had the lowest population growth rate since the year to June 2012, when the rate of growth was 0.5 per cent.

The 12 months to June 2021 was the first full year of population data during which Covid-19 border closures and travel restrictions were in force, Stats NZ said.

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In recent years, before the Covid pandemic, migration had been the main driver of New Zealand’s population growth.

In the June 2021 year there were 61,300 live births, up 3 per cent from the year before, while deaths were up 1 per cent to 33,600. That provided a natural increase of 27,700.

Migration added just 4700, with arrivals down 72 per cent from the previous year to 45,300, and departures down 46 per cent to 40,500.

The group aged 65-plus was the fastest growing in the latest year, up 3.4 per cent, or 27,200 people, while the under-15 group increased by 2200, and the number of people aged 40-64 rose by 7700.

In contrast, the number of people aged 15-39 fell by 0.27 per cent, or 4700. Stats NZ said the decline was mainly because more people were moving out of the group as they aged, than there were younger people moving into it.

During the past decade, the population rose from the 2011 total of 4.38m, with the fastest annual growth rate during those 10 years being 2.27 per cent in the year to June 2016, while the slowest growth rate between 2014 and 2020 was 1.6 per cent.

During that decade, the number of children and young people under 15 rose from 910,700 to 968,600, the 15-39 cohort rose from 1.46m to 1.75m, the 40-46 group rose from 1.43m to 1.59m, and those 65-plus were up from 580,100 to 819,100.