Census results are in.
On the ethnicity question, it was reported that:
The 2006 census results reveal 429,429 people – or 11 per cent of the population – called themselves “New Zealanders” or “Kiwis”. Their number increased five-fold since the last census in 2001 and they became the third-biggest ethnic group, behind European and Maori.
I mention this as a followup to two posts in March. I was concerned then about the fact that the campaign to get people to write in “Ethnicity: New Zealander” was going to lessen the utility of the census results. It has.
About one in ten Kiwis wrote in ‘New Zealander’; about one in eight of those ticked another box or two as well.
Take as a premise that some people of exact same background, within the same family even, can sincerely choose to indicate differing ethnicity – NZ European vs New Zealander. If we want an ethnicity question at all, we want to amalgamate these two responses.
It’s probably reasonable to stack those who ticked only ‘NZ European’ with the ‘New Zealander’ only results, giving us a total ‘NZ European’ category population. (Recall, in previous years ‘New Zealander’ was bundled with ‘New Zealand European’ by default.)
But what about someone who ticked ‘Maori’ and wrote in New Zealander as well? There were plenty of these, enough that they were mentioned by a Stats NZ spokesman in the print version of the Dom Post article linked above. Say two brothers exist – one sincerely ticks Maori and NZ European, the other sincerely ticks Maori and writes New Zealander. How on earth can we make the assumption to amalgamate this data? And if we can’t, how useful is the ethnicity question at all?
The ethnicity question was undermined by this campaign. In part, this was its purpose.
So why do I care? That, I’m no longer sure about. What do we get out of accurate ethnicity data? Arguments in March undermined my assumptions about the public health usefulness of this information – what other compelling reason might there be? Is simply knowing about ourselves enough?
Bah. I’m disappointed with the whole thing, because it means our ethnicity data becomes needlessly complex at best and misleading or opaque at worst; and because the whole affair emerged from some reactionary politics that were really quite silly.
I’m enjoying looking at the census results, anyway. Nice to see New Zealand get more diverse. We can handle it.
I enjoyed receiving info about the results, esp given I no longer live in NZ.
I really wonder Morgue what use the ethnicity question is at all beyond giving us information about who make up the country and how those people see themselves. I seem to recall writing way back when that the allocation of resources could just as accurately or perhaps even more accurately be based on relative income and population distribtution (well I’m fairly sure I didn’t mention population distribution, but it sounds cool). Ethnicity just tells us about who we think we are, and to that extent, the confusing information that has been drawn from the census is perhaps actually quite useful in that it helps show that New Zealanders-Kiwis-Maori-Pakeha or whoever you are, are struggling with the determination of who we are. I mean, if ethnicity equals genetic ancestory, then ask it like it is. If ethnicity is about how we perceive ourselves then lets stay on the merry-go-round.
god this stuff still makes me angry. denominator data = out the window basically. and k. in z. we’ve been through this. there is a strong correlation between ethnicity and poor health outcomes independent of income. this may not be caused by ethnicity but since we don’t know what it is caused by it is the best proxy we have (or had) for need.
all this knowing ourselves rubbish! frankly, i don’t really care how everyone feels about the census. have a nationality question so we can all feel nice and included then have a real ethnicity question.
Waitasecond… *refreshes memory of ethnicity conversations past* – yeah, somehow I got that backwards. Ethnicity data is indeed very useful for public health outcomes. I knew that.
Somehow my brain got a bit turned around. I remember some of my assumptions ended up changed, but where I ended up was a bit wonky. I agree with homeperm.