Benefit receipt
Ethnic differences
Please note: ethnicity data should be interpreted with caution as collection and prioritisation practices have varied over time and between locations.
Young Māori people are over-represented for their population size in benefit receipt numbers.
This is the case for all benefits, but the difference is largest with respect to the Domestic Purposes Benefit. More than half of all young Domestic Purposes Benefit recipients in 2007 were Māori.
New Zealand European young people were under-represented in benefit receipt across all benefits. Pacific young people were also under-represented, particularly in the case of Sickness/Invalids benefits where only 5 percent of recipients aged 16 to 24 were of Pacific ethnicity.
| Ethnic group | Total | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Zealand European | Māori | Pacific | Other | Unspecified | ||
| Unemployment Benefit | 39.1% | 39.6% | 7.8% | 9.6% | 4.0% | 100.0% |
| Domestic Purposes Benefit | 31.2% | 52.0% | 9.5% | 4.3% | 3.0% | 100.0% |
| Sickness/Invalids Benefit | 55.1% | 28.7% | 5.0% | 8.2% | 2.9% | 100.0% |
| Independent Youth Benefit | 40.4% | 44.7% | 6.0% | 6.0% | 2.8% | 100.0% |
| Total across four main benefits | 41.1% | 41.9% | 7.6% | 6.4% | 3.1% | 100.0% |
Source: Ministry of Social Development, prioritised ethnicity.
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.
