Monitoring Ethnic Inequalities in Health

Monitoring Ethnic Inequalities in Health
Date of publication: June 2001

The measurement and monitoring of ethnic inequalities in health has long been of policy interest in New Zealand. The need for reliable and valid information on these inequalities has become even more pressing with the development of the New Zealand Health Strategy, released by the Minister of Health on 14 December 2000.

However, the quality of ethnic health statistics in New Zealand remains problematic, both because of changing societal concepts of ethnicity and a limited appreciation on the part of some data collectors of the policy relevance of this data.

Monitoring Ethnic Inequalities in Health aims to summarise how the current state of ethnic health statistics in New Zealand evolved, and to identify ways for improving these statistics in the future. This advice will feed into the review of ethnicity measurement currently being undertaken by Statistics New Zealand, which is due for completion by mid-2002.

This report describes the history and current state of ethnic health statistics in New Zealand, including: measurement of ethnic group denominators, measurement of ethnic group numerators and calculation of ethnic-specific rates.

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