🔔 A big batch of data from the 2023 New Zealand Census was released today!
Below is a chart I made from it of the types of dwelling that people lived in, by age group and gender in 2023. Most people lived in separate (detached) private houses, but joined dwellings like flats and apartments were relatively important for housing younger and older people. There are also some gender differences — most notable to me are that females aged 70 and over are less likely to live in separate private houses, as are non-binary people of all ages.
The data released today includes:
- Summaries of responses to all Census questions about people, dwellings, and households by geographic area
- Population count cross-tabulations by age, gender, and geographic area
- Iwi affiliation and Māori descent cross-tabulations by age, gender, ethnicity, and geographic area
- Dwelling occupancy status by dwelling type by geographic area
- Dwelling type by ethnicity, age, gender, and geographic area
This data can be used to understand the characteristics of different types of geographic areas, from broad regions down to the suburb (SA2) or city block (SA1) level.
Data for the 2013, 2018, and 2023 Census are available in the same tables, but we need to be mindful of changes to data collection over time, and any trends need to be interpreted cautiously. A key difference is the use of administrative data to fill gaps in the 2018 and 2023 Censuses, and some changes to the methods used for gap-filling between 2018 and 2023.
The good news for data people is that this data is easily accessible from StatsNZ’s new Aotearoa Data Explorer with fast downloads of clean CSV files and even an API.
I’ll be exploring this data soon and will share more charts and maps here. Please get in touch if I can help your organisation look at something specific.