I prefer the word 'solid'

Interesting that the Maori and Pacific rates are pretty much the inverse of the smoking graph in the post below.

Calling Pacific people 'obese' is problematic in my view. If I go into the local supermarket just before school I see lots of Pacific girls and lots of Asian girls. The Pacific girls are often very tall - tower over me - they appear what I would call big-boned, and they ooze health and vitality. The Asian girls are generally more petite, and slighter in build, but also look comfortable and happy in the bodies they have. 

Do you think if we swapped a couple around at birth and had the Pacific girl raised in the Asian family and vice versa they would look very different by age 16?

Suicide rates by age and decade

This is another eye opener. In 40 years the shape of  the combined columns has reversed. I knew what the current figures looked like but not those from the early seventies. 

Put yourself into the applicable column. If you're a boomer then you are going to appear in the lowest or second lowest columns all along. The generation I hail from has had less propensity to suicide than those following or those who lived through the depression and world wars.

Selevasio Tu'ima sings Hallelujah

Very beautiful.

How's that 'smoke free NZ by 2025' looking?

So much for crippling tobacco taxes. 

Traffic mortality rate three times higher for Maori

Very busy with other stuff right now but have just come across the 2016 Social Report which is full of interesting - but in this case disquieting - data.

I'll post some of the graphs over the next few days. No commentary from me (as per the report) but you are most welcome to comment.

Here's the first;

Stunning

The table above is an answer to a PQ asked by Carmel Sepuloni.

Not much grist for the opposition mill here.

As the teenage birth rate plummets so do the numbers on welfare.

I would never have thought it possible for the numbers to drop this quickly in such a short time frame. It's stunning.