Social wellbeing of selected demographic groups
Introduction
The indicators in the Social Report 2016 have highlighted a number of differences in social wellbeing outcomes depending on people’s demographic characteristics, such as ethnicity, sex and age.
In this section, social wellbeing outcomes for different demographic groups are summarised to provide an overall view of changes over time for selected ethnic groups, and an overview of differences between selected subgroups.
Firstly, social wellbeing outcomes are discussed for the following ethnic groups:
- Māori
- Pacific peoples – this group is made up of people with origins in the Pacific, including Samoa, Cook Islands, Tonga, Niue, Fiji and Tokelau.
- the Asian ethnic group – this group is made up of people with origins in the Asian continent, from Afghanistan in the west to Japan in the east, and from China in the north to Indonesia in the south.
Each discussion is followed by a radial chart showing changes in social wellbeing outcomes between two time periods (2005–2008 and 2012–2014).
Secondly, social wellbeing outcomes are compared for:
- females relative to males, with accompanying radial chart
- different ages.
It is important to note that comparisons are for population groups overall, and that there is much variation within groups. For Māori and Pacific peoples, poor outcomes relative to those of the total New Zealand population may be partly attributable to the younger age structure of these ethnic groups. Looking at population subsets for many surveys and data sources increases concerns about the robustness of the data, and data is not always available for all groups.
