“One thing is very clear – the Pakeha population will decline, both in terms of demographic composition and then also numerically. The Māori population and Pacific populations will continue to grow”
dr tahu kukutai
On the campaign trail Christopher Luxon suggested, albeit coyly, that the country should start procreating more vigorously and patriotically. But then he recanted, or at least his deputy Nicola Willis did on his behalf.
Despite climbing-down from that advocacy, the wannabe Prime Minister had inadvertently highlighted the major social and economic issue facing the country, even if he was framing it the wrong way round and now doesn’t want to talk about it.
“We need people,” he said at the time, speaking to an infrastructure conference, of all things. “Here is the deal – New Zealand stopped replacing itself in 2016. I encourage all of you to go out there and have more babies if you wish, that would be helpful.”
When this attracted the ire of females – or white middle-class ones at least – his deputy and shadow finance minister Willis wanted to play it down.
Speaking to reporters later, she was asked if she believed people needed to have more babies in New Zealand.
“No, that is the decision for individuals depending on their desires and their family circumstances. I think what you’re referring to is a joke that Christopher Luxon made.”
Willis said National would never be a party that told people what the right size for their family was.
“The National Party does not have a policy that we want to encourage women to change their decisions about their family size or change guidance to men for that matter either and to suggest otherwise is ridiculous.”
“He made a joke.”
Despite their disavowals and “jokes”, National’s “no-policy” is a policy. It appears the main governing party doesn’t have a policy on the shifting demographics that are going to see the Pākehā population declining in the next 20 years, while the Māori and Pasifika populations grow. The Asian population will also increase but the main driver there will be immigration.
Because, to paraphrase Luxon, here’s the real deal. When he said “we need people” because we’re not replacing ourselves, he missed some people; Because Māori are replacing themselves quite well. In fact they’ve been growing in numbers and as a percentage of the population for some time and will continue to do so.
Luxon’s clumsy “joke” about a demographic slide in the New Zealand population only exposed a lack of awareness of the changing face of the country. What the numbers show is an almost mirror image between Pākehā and Māori age structures to the point that there is a clear demographic divide between Pākehā Baby Boomers and young Māori.
Around 40 percent of the Pākehā population is over the age of 50 (compared with around 20 percent of the Māori population in the same age bracket), which means in the next 20 years approximately 1.3 million Pākehā will be in retirement – or dying. But only around 750,000 Pākehā kids will enter adulthood over the same period.
By contrast, around 40 percent of the Māori population is 18 years old or younger (compared with 23 percent of the Pākehā population), which means around 300,000 Māori children will be entering adulthood over the next 20 years. Around 42 percent of the Pasifika population are 18 or under and have a median age of 23.4, which means approximately 160,000 will enter adulthood in the next 20 years.
The numbers of Asian children entering adulthood in New Zealand will also increase, although the dynamics are more complicated. For a start, Asia is a catch-all term for one of the largest, most populous and diverse regions in the world. Secondly, the increase in the Asian population will be driven more by immigration as the resident Asian population generally has a lower birth rate than Māori and Polynesian.
Actually, these numbers are based on the 2018 census, so we’re already five years into these changes. And for Māori at least the numbers are likely to be an undercount – the response rates for the census in 2018 were 74 percent for both Māori and Pacific.
Even with all these caveats, these numbers pose questions that are inescapable. These numbers will impact on almost every decision this and future governments are faced with in the short to long-term future of the country – housing and cost of living, health and retirement, education and employment, taxation and the economy. All of these will be shaped irrevocably by population trends that can’t be reversed or changed.
This demographic divide has been so-far ignored by the parties making up the incoming government, but also Labour over its two terms.
During their election campaigns the main parties focused their attention on the section of the population that is in decline, which just so happens to be the country’s largest voting bloc – white Baby Boomers. Throughout the election campaign the media repeatedly showed images of leaders of the three parties that are now forming a government speaking to audiences that were a sea of grey heads and white faces.
While pandering to this cohort might get you into government, they’re not the future of the country. They’re heading for retirement, rest-homes or cemeteries while still believing they should be not only in power but deciding the political future of the country. However, economically they’re already starting to be a drag on the economy as they move into their final years and start making more demands of the health sector, and will be drawing superannuation for longer than any previous generation.
Conversely, in many of the soundbites and election sloganeering there was constant rhetoric that portrayed Māori as some kind of threat, either implicitly or explicitly. The media barely provided any pushback on this, maybe because its ranks are predominantly Pākehā. It’s leadership certainly is.
As happens overseas, issues of race are often euphemised in language that appeals to a white population without actually mentioning race at all.
Winston Peters, who has built a decades-long political career appealing to old white people’s gripes, had billboards saying: “Take back our country.” (It’s worth noting that Trump used this phrase on January 6 and has used it often since). Take it back from who, exactly? Who is “our” referring to and why do they have greater claim to ownership of the country than this other anonymous group that has supposedly taken over? Peters’ slogan only makes sense when read in the context of his decades-long tactic of pitching to old white people. His modus operandi appears to have been to accentuate concerns for these old white people enough, make them angry enough, and you’ll get in.
Peters has been so successful at this because there are lots of old white people to scare. Because the Pākehā Baby Boomer group is so large, he only has to tickle the attention of a small percentage and he’s over the line and back in Parliament. So successful has he been that other political leaders have occasionally pinched his methodology, much to Peters irritation. But Peters also grew up in an era when it was widely perceived that the way for Māori to be successful was to act and aspire to be more like Pākehā. Being Māori was no way to get ahead.
David Seymour was at least more explicit in his election slogan. “End racial division” one billboard thundered. Seymour even had the audacity to claim Nelson Mandela would vote for ACT if he was alive because he opposed apartheid (Mandela’s grandson rubbished this claim). Seymour has not read enough New Zealand history – Governor George Grey served terms in both New Zealand and South Africa at crucial points in both countries’ histories. Despite apartheid being legally abolished over 30 years ago, South Africa is still very much divided along racial lines by socio-economic status. Abolishing the explicitly racist laws of apartheid doesn’t erase the impacts of colonisation and racism that can and do drag on for generations.
What Seymour must know is that this rhetoric appeals to the same generation Peters has targeted. But what he ignores is that New Zealand was and still is already divided along racial lines if you look at every social and economic measure. None of Seymour, Luxon or Peters have made any great noise about this, let alone said much about how they intend to address it. Nor did ex Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, for that matter. Māori kids don’t vote, but Māori kids make up nearly half the Māori population and will be a larger proportion of the country’s adults over the next 20 years.
Instead, Seymour said one of the first things he wanted to do when getting into government was blow up the Ministry for Pacific Affairs, but then chided everyone for not getting the joke when his humour blew up on him. Now the incoming government doesn’t have any Pacific MPs.
But now the business of governing is about to begin, which group will the incoming government be focused on when it makes policy and legislative decisions? Who will its government benefit most? The rhetoric on the campaign trail suggests the incoming government will continue to pander to Pākehā Baby Boomers, while displaying a hostile or indifferent attitude towards young Māori. This might make political sense for the short-term, but socially and economically it could spell disaster for the country over the longer term.
Early indications from the coalition documents and Cabinet appointments are that the next generation of Māori are not a high priority.
But you can’t have it both ways. If politicians want to promise a gold-plated retirement and health system for their old, white voters, who are going to increasingly be a drag on the country’s finances, it’s going to increasingly be a growing brown population that will be paying for it. No amount of dog-whistling or election sloganeering will change this brute fact. If politicians fail to face up to these changes they are essentially ignoring the biggest economic, social and political issue of the coming decades. With all the variables that face a government, this is one that is locked in for the next generation at least. Treasury reports state clearly that New Zealand’s overall ageing population is going to increase superannuation and health costs while reducing tax revenue and GDP.
The Pākehā population structure (above) is older with a median age of 41.4 and has a fertility rate that is lower than its mortality rate. In short, the Pākeha population is not only stagnant but will start to decline over the next 20 years. That decline will accelerate as the cohort he and other leaders are so focused on – Pākehā Baby Boomers – will start dying off.
However, the population structure of Māori (above) is far younger – the median age is 25.4. Māori fertility is also higher. Which means the brown population is going to steadily grow not only in numbers but as a percentage of the total population over the next 20 years.
Len Cook is firmly in the middle of the Pākehā Baby Boomer generation. He’s also the former head of Statistics New Zealand and also headed Statistics in the UK. So, he knows his numbers. And the numbers are clear.
“I’m not sure when it will be, but in somewhere between 10 and 20 years’ time deaths will exceed births in the Pākehā population. And you’re going to have this extraordinary increase of Māori and Pacific.”
“We don’t do enough work looking 20 years ahead at these demographic structures.”
Demographer Tahu Kukutai is based at Waikato University’s National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis and was mentored by Ian Pool, whose ground-breaking work on Māori population studies is still considered foundational. She says population structures and mortality and birth rates don’t shift a great deal over time, which makes it relatively straightforward when making projections about future trends.
“One thing is very clear – the Pākehā population will decline, both in terms of demographic composition and then also numerically. The Māori population and Pacific populations will continue to grow – they have a very different age structure that’s nearly all entirely driven by natural increase. And then the Asian population will grow as well through migration. So the non-European share of Aotearoa will grow considerably and the relative balance will shift demographically.”
These changes are due to differences in the rates of natural increase, or the difference between birth rates and death rates. When death rates are higher than birth rates, there’s a net loss. Rates of fertility have dropped globally as women have more control over their fertility and, in Western countries in particular, choose to have children at an older age than previous generations. Running alongside this, people are living longer. This means each generation is taking longer to replace itself. But Māori and Pākehā replacement rates differ significantly, due to higher Māori fertility. Māori also die around seven years younger on average.
“The European age structure is older and rapidly aging, primarily driven by sub-replacement fertility and declining fertility. That’s happened for quite some time now. The Baby Boom was a blip in a long term trajectory of fertility decline. And so that’s shaped the age structure in particular ways. Now you’ve got sub-replacement fertility for Pakeha women, and peak childbearing is 30 to 34, and that will probably shift up to 35 to 39 in the not too distant future. (Pākehā) women are delaying having their first child and when they do have their first child, they have fewer children as well.”
“So 2.1 (births per woman) is what you need to replace. You need one for yourself, and one for the male, because only half of the population can have babies. In some countries it’s down to 1.5, it’s not 1.9, it’s not hovering there near replacement. It’s like way off replacement.”
According to Stats NZ, New Zealand’s total fertility rate in 2020 was down to 1.61 births per woman, its lowest recorded level, and well below the population replacement rate of 2.1.
The Retirement Commission has noted the proportion of people aged 65 years or older is steadily increasing, from 495,606 in 2006 (12.3 percent) to 715,167 (15.2 percent) in 2018 (Stats.NZ). Long-term projections indicate a 90 percent probability of increasing to 21–26 percent in 2048 and 24–34 percent in 2073.
There is an estimated 90 percent probability that there will be 1.36–1.51 million people aged 65-plus in 2048, and 1.61–2.22 million in 2073. The largest growth occurs up to 2038 as the baby boomers move into the 65+ age group.
This means New Zealand’s population is steadily ageing, as the birth rate is also declining. At 1.61 in 2020 it is below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman (Stats NZ).
Although racial categories are fluid – and many Māori also identify with other ethnic groups including Pākeha – the Pākehā population will decline.
Statistics NZ projections show that in 2040 – 200 years after the Treaty of Waitangi was signed – the Pākehā population will start to drop due to deaths outnumbering births. The drop will be around 300 in 2040 and then steadily increase to a drop of 800 in 2041, 1400 in 2042 and 1900 in 2043. There will be still be slight increases in the Pākehā population during these years, but this will be mainly from modest numbers of white immigrants and Māori and other ethnicities also identifying as European/Pākehā.
“So if you want to grow your population, to put it crudely, if we’re talking about the European-Pākehā population, where’s that going to come from? Where’s that going to come from when all the other white populations are in sub-replacement fertility?” says Kukutai.
In the next 20 years the rate of natural increase for Māori population will be around 13,000 annually, a rate that is already happening and is projected to continue at this rate for the foreseeable future. This is due to birth rates being higher than death rates.
There is also a marked contrast in regional replacement rates. The Gisborne and Northland regions – areas with the highest proportion of Māori in the country – are showing replacement rates of over 2.2. Hawke’s Bay, Bay of Plenty and Taranaki – areas with a significant percentage of Māori – have replacement rates around 2.1. Every other region is below the replacement rate of 2.1.
Kukutai says these shifts are effectively being ignored even though the general trajectories are relatively certain and will shape the future of the country in profound ways politically and economically.
“Politicians are notorious at not looking at things to do with the population. You’d think it’d be really obvious that you need to have that.”
“We’re not we’re not talking about a maybe, this is 100 percent certainty. People are in denial. Sometimes people are in denial because they don’t like the thought of it. But Māori are much more part of the future than current generations and previous generations had to meaningfully grapple with.”
“The overall population is dominated by the European Pākehā population, which is older and advancing in structural aging. I don’t really think that people fully comprehend just that fundamental shift between older people and tamariki, that that transition has already happened, and that is not going to reverse.”
She says part of the ignorance is wilful because those in power don’t want to acknowledge they might have to not only change the way they exercise power but actually relinquish it.
“I think essentially it’s about power and maintaining that power and the different ways that that can be threatened, whether that’s economically, demographically, socially or politically, there’s these different mechanisms for maintaining power. And then when those mechanisms look like they’re shifting, those in dominant positions don’t like it.”
One of those mechanisms – demographics – is shifting, and rapidly so. Most Pakeha are only vaguely aware of it. And many don’t like it.
But we’ve been here before. And we didn’t do a great job in the past either.
NEXT: From Dying Race to Urban Segregation
- Made with the support of the Public Interest Journalism fund
Thank you for this insightful research and discussion.
As well as looking at numbers there should be a look at where the wealth is held. The pakeha boomers will already hold a greater share of the country’s wealth than Maori and Pasifika. Pakeha post boomers may not be reproducing at replacement rate. But will inherit a disproportionate share of the country’s wealth as the boomer generation shuffles through retirement to the cemetery. Concentration of wealth and the assumed privilege that comes with it is not a good recipe for social cohesion.
A real discussion about NZ’s population is long overdue. Could start with genuine discussion about what might be a good population size for NZ to retain status as a first world country. And if that is what we want.
This also overlooks the fact that through intermarriage a lot of the “European” population is inevitably over the generations becoming “Maori” as the definition of “Maori” is anyone with some Maori ancestry. Perhaps that is no bad thing because we need to be confronting the challenges of the future as one people.