Sharing family meals
Ethnic differences
Differences between ethnic groups in the frequency of sharing a main meal around a table were small.
However, the PISA 2000 survey found that Asian 15 year old students were significantly more likely (74.8 percent) to report sharing a main meal around a table with their parents “several times a week” than students from other ethnic groups (between 63 and 65 percent).
| Frequency of eating a main meal with their parents around a table | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Never or hardly ever (%) |
Few times a year (%) |
Once a month (%) |
Several times a month (%) |
Several times a week (%) |
|
| Pākehā | 10.7 | 6.6 | 7.5 | 11.9 | 63.3 |
| Maori | 9.7 | 7.6 | 5.3 | 13.3 | 64.1 |
| Pacific | 9.1 | 7.4 | 5.7 | 13.1 | 64.8 |
| Asian | 7.2 | 4.0 | 3.3 | 10.8 | 74.8 |
Source: PISA 2000, prioritised ethnicity data. Missing responses have been excluded from denominator.
Notes
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.
