Living with Intellectual Disability in New Zealand

Living with Intellectual Disability in New Zealand
Key results on intellectual disability from the 2001 Household Disability Survey and the 2001 Disability Survey of Residential Facilities

Date of publication: April 2005

ISBN 0-478-28326-1 (Book)
ISBN 0-478-28329-6 (Internet)

HP 4072

Statistics New Zealand did two surveys in New Zealand about people with disability.

1) The Household Disability Survey
Which was about day-to-day living situations and what goes on in the lives of over 7000 adults and children with disabilities.

2) The Disability Survey of Residential Facilities
Which gathered information on over 900 adults with disability living in homes for older people and hospitals.

This is a summary of the information gathered from these surveys about adults and children with intellectual disability.

The information on children with disability was given by their parents or caregivers.

This summary includes the number of people as well as a percentage of people with intellectual disabilities at the end of each bit of information.

The number of people in this report was estimated from the number of people living in New Zealand.

All interviews were done from June to September 2001.

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For these surveys Intellectual Disability was defined as:

For an adult:

15 years of age and over
if the person needed help from organisations like IHC or People First
if the person ever attended a special school or got special education because of intellectual disability.

For a child:

0–14 years of age
with any kind of intellectual disability, handicap or developmental delay.

How many people living in households had intellectual disability?

Adults

28,900 adults with intellectual disability living in New Zealand households:

14,200 men with intellectual disability

14,700 women with intellectual disability.

This means 1% of adults living in New Zealand households had intellectual disability.

Children

13,000 children with intellectual disability living in New Zealand households:
- 8900 boys with intellectual disability
- 4100 girls with intellectual disability.

This means 2% of children living in New Zealand households had intellectual disability.

Document availability

You can download the full text of this report below as a PDF.

Living with Intellectual Disability in New Zealand (PDF, 879 kB)

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You can order a copy by emailing moh@wickliffe.co.nz or calling 04 496 2277 quoting HP number 4072. Please let us know your name, your physical address and how many copies you would like.