New Zealand’s Population

This week I did some research on the New Zealand population as I think it is quite an important topic. I wanted to know about ethnic minorities as well the demographic situation in New Zealand.

New-Zealand had an estimated population of 4,242,048 persons in 2013.

The percentage of the European population was 71.4, which is 3,030,048 persons. In other words: one out of four New Zealanders is not European. Amongst those almost 30 missing percent are different ethnicities. My source differentiates between Maori, Pacific peoples, Asian and Middle Eastern/African/South American. Maori people make 14.1 percent of NZ-population (598,605 persons), the pacific peoples make almost 7 percent which are 295,944 persons. Asian ethnicity represent 11.1 percent of the population, 471,711 persons, while Middle Eastern, African and South American ethnicity only represent 1.1 percent with a number of 46,956 persons. This small number explains the rather superficial differentiation between the different ethnic groups.

From my perspective, I would deduct that migration to New Zealand has mainly come from surrounding states as well as European states as African, Middles Eastern and, South American ethnicity is rather rare in New Zealand.

The population of New Zealand is furthermore rather female than male: in 2013 male population represented 48.7 percent (2,064,018) of the total population while the remaining 51.3 percent (2,178,033) are obviously female.

Further information as well the sources for this paragraph can be found on stats.nz.

Concerning the general demography, New Zealand is a younger country compared to Germany. The median age in New Zealand is 38 years while Germany’s population has a median age of 44.2 (2013). Nevertheless, the population has grown older recently although population is increasing in general. In comparison to other western countries, it is still in a good state concerning the balance between old and young people, but the western trend of the aging society can nevertheless be observed as shown in the graphs below as well as in the following numbers: there has been a significant decrease in the percentage of person in a certain age between 2006 and 2013. The decrease of people aged between 10 to 14 years was at 6.3 percent, between 30 and 34 years at 7.2 and 35 to 39 years at 11.3 percent. On the other hand there were a lot more people aged between 50 and 69, the increase between 2006 and 2013 was at 21.5 percent.

These facts were also given on stats.nz along with a lot of other information. In addition there is also a nice tool with an interactive demographic population pyramid for New Zealand.

In conclusion, New Zealand is predominantly populated by Europeans while other big ethical groups are the native Maori population as well as Asian and Pacific ethic groups. The country’s population is, unlike a lot of other western countries, still growing naturally, which means not by means of migration while the typical western trend of an aging population can nevertheless be observed there.