Birth statistics

The number of births is the highest since 1992. The September 2006 year has just been released and the ethnicity breakdown is interesting. Of the 59,120 births 29 percent were registered with Maori ethnicity, 15 percent Pacific, 10 percent Asian and 70 percent with NZ European and others, 1.5 percent. Obviously the percentages do not add up because around a quarter of births have more than one ethnicity registered.

But in 2004 28 percent of babies had Maori ancestry, 68 percent were non-Maori and 4 percent had no ancestry specified.

Since 1996 Asian births have grown by 61 percent from 3792 to 6100.