Decades of Disparity II: Socioeconomic mortality trends in New Zealand 1981

Decades of Disparity II: Socioeconomic mortality trends in New Zealand 1981–1999
Public Health Intelligence Occasional Bulletin Number 25

Date of publication: March 2005

HP 4005

The Public Health Intelligence group of the Ministry of Health publishes a series of occasional bulletins on the health status of New Zealanders, updating and extending the comprehensive review carried out in 1999 and reported in Our Health Our Future – Hauora Pakiri, Koiora Roa.

The 25th bulletin in this series, Decades of Disparity II: Socioeconomic mortality trends in New Zealand 1981–1999, provides estimates of trends in mortality rates (all cause and by cause) and life expectancies for income, educational and occupational groups over the 1980s and 1990s, using a record linkage process that matches census and mortality records. The 1980s and 1990s were a time of rapid social and economic change in New Zealand, making the findings of this report of particular interest.

Ethnic inequalities in mortality are considered only briefly in this report. Such inequalities were the subject of the first report in the Decades of Disparity series, published in 2003 and available on this website. The third and final report in the series, due to be published in 2005/06, will examine the complex interaction between ethnic identity and socioeconomic position in shaping the survival chances of New Zealanders over the same time period.

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