Mortality
Ethnic differences
Mortality rates for Māori young people are consistently higher than those of non- Māori.
In 2002 and 2003, young Māori were almost twice as likely to die as young non-Māori. Among young people aged 20 to 24, the Māori mortality rate was 1.14 per 1,000 young people, compared with a non-Māori mortality rate of 0.63 per 1,000 young people.
Age-specific death rates per 1,000 population aged 15 to 19 and 20 to 24, by Māori ethnicity status, 2002-2003
Source: Derived from Child and Youth Mortality Review Committee, 2006, Third Report to the Minister of Health Reporting Mortality 2002-2004.
Note
We encourage you to be cautious about drawing conclusions from comparisons between ethnic groups. Apparent differences (in unadjusted data) between ethnic groups can often be explained by factors other than ethnicity per se, such as the different age, sex, geographical and socioeconomic distributions of different ethnic populations. In addition, datasets vary in the way that they collect and record ethnicity data.
