Friday, March 26, 2021

Stark contrast between the birth places of Maori and NZ European babies

Over the ten year period to 2018, births of NZ European babies were reasonably evenly spread across the economic deciles with the fewest being born in the least deprived decile - the poorest neighbourhood.

For Maori babies the reverse is true. The highest percentage are born in the poorest decile.

More than one in four Maori babies is born in the poorest area compared to one in twenty NZ European babies.

What a stark contrast.






5 comments:

Oi said...

I am completely unsurprised.
I would expect the graph to parallel solo mothers and young mothers who indulge in a succession of partners too.

oneblokesview said...

I am not surprised.
It appears that ""poverty"" is highly corelated with larger numbers of ofspring.
Only when societies are "richer" do the births per female drop.

I am thinking of Asian and African countries.
Japan and Korea being richer and numbers of births per female drop.

I know the reason why in Asia (no welfare state/No pension. Produce children to provide in old age)
Dont know why in NZ

Kiwi Dave said...

If the deciles used are for NZ as a whole, given the different wealth distributions of the Maori and European populations, we would expect to see a higher proportion of Maori births in the lower deciles, even if all other things were equal.

To what extent this accounts for the markedly different pattern of European and Maori births, I have no idea, but if poverty tends to be transmitted from one generation to the next, then these graphs foretell increasing Maori concentration at the bottom of society.

Kiwi Dave said...

I should have added another paragraph to my 10.11 comment.

Combine the data here with the NCEA data and births to young mothers in the previous two posts, plus the current enthusiasm for (mis)diagnosing colonialism as the source of disadvantage, and NZ could be heading for massive social unrest with race and social class at the centre.

Lindsay Mitchell said...

Kiwi Dave, You are correct. The shape of the Maori versus NZ European population dispersion over deciles is similar - but for births the gradient is steeper.