Family and household projections to 2031

From Statistics NZ

The latest subnational family and household projections provide an indication of possible future changes in the number and composition of families and households.

Highlights of the latest release project that:

• All 16 of New Zealand's regions will have more couple-without-children families and one-person households in 2031 than in 2006.*

• There will be a continued decline in average household size for all regions and territorial authorities, between 2006 and 2031.

• The Auckland region will account for almost half (48 percent) of the national growth in the number of households by 2031.

*‘Couple-without-children’ include:

(a) couples who will never have children,
(b) couples who will have children in the future,
(c) couples whose children have left the parental home.

Note that first projection, that all 16 regions will have more one-person households.....but we keep focusing our ministry on families, married couples, youth, children.

Photo, David Salafia

PS: This year is Census Year - in just a month's time. It's a date I was looking forward to, in many ways, when all the 2006 Census figures that were becoming increasingly unuseful would be replaced. And now my role here as Research and Resource Assistant is coming to an end....pooh! :)

NZ's Population Grows in all regions

Some stats about population out today from Statistics NZ.

Auckland's population grew faster in the June 2010 year than any of the other 15 regions in the country. It has has now been New Zealand's fastest-growing region for the last nine June years. In the June 2010 year, Auckland's population grew by 23,300 (1.6 percent) and it was the only region with a growth rate above the 1.2 percent national average.

Natural increase (excess of births over deaths) made the main contribution to the Auckland region's population growth, accounting for 69 percent of growth in the June 2010 year.

"Auckland region's population has a relatively young age structure, with high proportions in the child-bearing ages," acting Population Statistics manager Kimberly Cullen said. "This results in a high number of births and gives the region built-in momentum for future growth."

New Zealand's 15 other regions all recorded population increases in the June 2010 year. Population growth rates ranged from 0.4 percent (West Coast) to 1.2 percent (Waikato and Canterbury).

"New Zealand experienced a rise in net migration in the June 2010 year because of fewer people leaving the country on a permanent or long-term basis," Ms Cullen said. "The rise in net migration, together with a high level of natural increase, has bolstered population growth in most of New Zealand's regions."

Most territorial authority areas (cities and districts) experienced population growth in the June 2010 year. Of New Zealand's 73 territorial authority areas, 68 had population increases, compared with 64 in 2009 and 59 in 2008.

Of the territorial authority areas, the Selwyn and Queenstown-Lakes districts had the highest growth rates in the June 2010 year (both up 2.5 percent). Other territorial authority areas with high growth rates included Manukau city and Rodney district (both up 1.9 percent), and Waitakere city (up 1.8 percent).

Australian spirituality stats

I flew to Auckland for a day the week before last in order to attend a conference run by the Church Life Survey people. It was valuable both in terms of meeting people and in hearing the plans for the next survey coming up in 2011.

I spend a good deal of my average week working with stats, both church and government (and any other kind I can lay my hands on), so I have some idea of the state of Christianity in New Zealand. The Church Life Survey is one source of such information. It has some connections with a similar group in Australia, and I've just been reading an article by Rowland Croucher which shows that the church/spiritual/Christian stats in Australia are pretty similar to those here in NZ.

Rowland's complete article is here, but those figures are culled from Shaping Australia's Spirituality: a Review of Christian Ministry in the Australian Context, by Philip Hughes and others (2010). This is a 150 page book (with some proof-reading errors, according to Rowland - the result of a publication date not leaving enough room for thoroughness) and, as Rowland says: ...you won’t find more interesting summary-data on modern Australia and its religions, especially Christianity, anywhere else in one small readable volume.

The book was produced by the Christian Research Association in Australia - we used to have a similar body here. You can buy a copy from CRA themselves, or from some Australian bookshops (not Koorong, as far as I could see).

Keeping stats safe

I've mentioned Bradley Wright on this blog before. He's an American sociologist who has done some writing on making sure stats are interpreted more accurately - he writes about this in his book, Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites … and Other Lies You've Been Told.

He's recently been interviewed by Ted Olsen in Christianity Today. A couple of quotes from the article:

...we have to make sense of statistics for ourselves, applying our own experience. If I went to a group of Christians and made some sort of outlandish theological or political statement, they would question it. But if I put it in numbers, people would tend to accept it without discernment.

and....

Rather than picking which statistics we agree with, we should be a little more agnostic about all of them. You don't have to believe them. Christians are called to accept and love people unconditionally. That doesn't apply to statistics. We should be cranky and judgmental.

There's another article on the subject on the CT site, by Ed Setzer. This one comes from earlier this year, and is entitled Curing Christians' Stats Abuse. He deals nicely with some typical 'myths':

"Christianity will die out in this generation unless we do something now."

"Only 4 percent of this generation is Christian."

"Ninety-four percent of teenagers drop out of church, never to return again."

Before you quote statistics...

In a short piece on the Associated Baptist Press site, Roger Lovette (he's the chirpy looking chap on the right) talks about a group of 13 pastors of various ages who've all been dismissed from their churches.   In the middle of his article he writes: 

The best statistics tell us that 1,600 ministers are dismissed or forced to resign every month in America. Leadership magazine reported more than a decade ago that nearly 23 percent of all ministers will be forced out before their careers end -- and that 67 percent of those affected will face forced termination more than once. Various indicators suggest these percentages have continued to climb. The Barna Institute says that in the United States a pastor is forced out every six minutes.

I've posted on here before about the 'best statistic' above, except that when I last read it, it was 1,500 pastors burning out every month.  I guess someone has now concluded that since that stat is supposed to be a few years old, another 100 pastors needed to be added into the mix.  

In a month of 30 days there are 43,200 minutes.   Now if a pastor is forced out every six minutes, as Barna's figure is supposed to claim, in a month that's a total of 7,200 ministers leaving their churches.  Does something strike you as a little odd here?   Barna's figures are four and a half times more than the 'best statistics.'    

I keep reading about these 1500 or 1600 pastors doing something every month, and the more I read it the more irritated I get.   Use statistics by all means - I do it in my job all the time - but for goodness sake check your facts.   As Bradley Wright points out in his book, too many statistics are badly read, poorly reported, and go on to perform a statistogynistic (think misogynistic) role in life.  Let's start nipping the worst of them in the bud.  

Another statistic bites the dust

I'm always interested to see whether stats are as true as they're claimed (see my earlier post on Bradley Wright's book on this topic).   Mike Fleischmann has written an article in the Leadership Journal called How outsiders find faith, which deals to a widely-held statistic, as follows: 

It was something I had heard repeated as long as I had been in ministry: "85 percent of all people who accept Christ do so before the age of 18." I was never exactly clear where that statistic came from, but I had no reason to doubt it either. Everyone I knew considered it an evangelistic axiom.


He goes on to show that there's an element of truth in it: around 85% of those brought up in a Christian home with two Christian parents who are actively involved in their church will become Christians before the age of 18. That doesn't leave just 15% of people who become Christians after this age, even though at first sight it looks as though it should. Fleishmann writes:

Interestingly, what I was seeing in my own ministry didn't match up with that. I was watching unchurched people at every stage of life respond to the gospel. Were these just anomalies to the pattern, or was there something more?

He determined to check the statistic out, and not surprisingly proved it was only partially right. 

What quickly became apparent in the data was that the large percentage of believers from Christian homes skews not only our evangelism statistics but also our understanding of the situation. While many of us say we are determined to reach "the unchurched," many of our assumptions are based on the experiences of those who were raised as Christians—for instance, the assumption of when people come to faith.

I discovered that when someone from an unchurched background makes a lasting decision for Christ, it happens much later than we have often assumed and is spread out across every stage of life. Of those, a majority (57 percent) accept Christ between the ages of 21 and 50.

Another point he makes is that while those brought up in Christian homes tend to become Christians as a result of an 'event' - often the rather inappropriately-named 'outreach'  - those who come to faith later in life (and this can even be well into the sixties or seventies) usually come to faith through a friend - not necessarily a close friend, but someone who cares about them in some way.  

When you ask someone raised Christian, "How did you come to Christ?" they typically answer by telling about an event. They'll describe a time and a place where they made their decision, often mentioning who they were with.

People from unchurched backgrounds, however, answer the same question differently. They typically tell about an extended process, life circumstances, key relationships, and significant issues they were working through.

Often their actual point of decision is less defined. For instance, 11.4 percent of committed Christians from unchurched backgrounds cannot identify a specific time or place where they accepted Christ. For those of us raised as Christians, this can make us a little uncomfortable. Their less defined and sometimes unconventional turning points are not what we're used to.

If you want to read about someone who became a Christian in a stationery cupboard, check out John Shore's (somewhat hilarious) blog post: I, a rabid anti-Christian, suddenly convert.

Update stats relating to Internet access and usage

Statistics NZ reports today that:

Mobile access plays an increasingly important role as New Zealanders use the Internet both at home and away from home. In over half of households with the Internet in 2009, a laptop or a hand-held computer was used to access the Internet at home, five times more than in 2006.

25% of Internet users in 2009 used mobile phones or wireless hot-spots to access the Internet while they were away from home. This compared with 14% of users in 2006.

“The increase may be because laptops are much more affordable now, and wireless connection technology is increasingly a standard function for laptops, Hand-held devices, and mobile phones,” Statistics NZ manager Gary Dunnet said.

There are still rural areas without broadband (rural in NZ Stats terms is an area with a population of less than 300). But even in more populated areas, cost is still a factor when it comes to using broadband.

At December 2009, almost half of New Zealand households not planning to get digital TV in the next 12 months cited cost as a reason for remaining on analogue broadcasting. This was followed by over 40 percent of households who stated they simply do not want it. {Nothing like a bit of the reactionary!] The move to digital TV by New Zealanders will allow analogue television to be switched off in the future. This will free up spectrum for other uses such as mobile broadband.

Over half of New Zealanders indicated they would vote online in general and local elections. Younger people and those earning higher incomes were more likely to vote online. These groups also have higher proportions of Internet users than other groups.

Get ready Church!

In the most recent North & South magazine (August 2010) Mike White presents some interesting statistics and projections regarding New Zealand's population. Every one of these stats affects how we do church. Remember that Israelite king who knew that something bad would happen to his children's generation and basically said, why should I care? We need not to be like that.

Currently 4,369,977 according to NZ Stats today (19.7.10)
By 2027 our population could be up to five million
Another person is added every 20 minutes.
Some 700,000 NZeders live overseas.

In the year to March 2010, the population grew by 56,300, the fastest growth rate since 2004.
It wasn't the result primarily of migration.
In 2009 there were 62,543 births and 28,964 deaths with a net gain of 33,579.
Net migration only added 21,253.

An argument for increased population is that if we want to maintain our lifestyle without excessive cost, we will need more people. Our infrastructure at the moment is costing more than we can afford given how ‘few’ we are.

Auckland Regional Council estimated the region is growing by more than 50 people a day, requiring 21 new homes, and resulting in 35 extra cars on the road.

Auckland is predicted to grow by 570,000 by 2031, reaching two million (the equivalent of adding all of Wellington and Dunedin to Auckland).

Auckland needs to consider and fund several major transport projects:
• Second harbour crossing at $4 billion
• Underground CBD rail loop at $1.5 billion
• Rapid-rail link with the airport at $1 billion
• Completion of SH20 at $2 billion.

There's too much talk of migration making the difference to the population – bringing people in with money and then being able to charge them for living here – compared with making sure that young people stay here in the country rather than t go off overseas and not return.

In 2009 one in eight NZeders was over 65.
By 2061 it’s predicted that one in four will be - some 1.44 million people.
Life expectancy for men will be 85.6 and women 88.7 in 2061.

The median age in 1971 was 25. Currently it’s 37. In 2061 it’ll be 43.

In the late 1960s, children made up 33 percent of the population. in 2061 they’ll be just 17%.

Currently 67% of the population is working age; in 2061 it’ll be just 58%.

Single people (not) at church

There's an interesting stat from a recent Barna report entitled, Who is Active in “Group” Expressions of Faith? Whether similar figures apply to NZ, I don't know, but it's a possibility.

• Religious activities are typically missing single adults, especially those who have never been married. Just less than half of Americans are unmarried. [see below] However, the Barna study found that two-thirds of those who attend church, participate in a small group and attend Sunday school are married.
Further, 69 percent of church volunteers are married.
Fewer than one-fifth of single adults who have never been married are involved in "group" faith experiences, with worship and volunteering the least likely to attract them.
Those participating in house churches, however, reflect a 50-50 split of married and unmarried.

The NZ Stats relating to marital status from the 2006 Census are as follows:

• 34.1 percent of people aged 15 years and over living in New Zealand have never married
• 48.6 percent are married,
  
• 17.4 percent are separated, divorced or widowed
  
  The other important stat in this are is that:
• 27.2 percent of people aged 15 years and over in New Zealand who have never been married live with a partner.

This last is a subgroup of the 'never married' category above. In effect, it says that more than a quarter of the people who have never married are not single, but living in a relationship. However, this still leaves just over 70% of the first group as single people.

To make it a little easier to grasp:
If 34 people out of a hundred have never been married, 9 will be living in a relationship, and 25 will be 'officially' single. Add these 25 to the 17 or so who are separated, divorced or widowed, and you have 42 people in a hundred who are effectively single.

Please tell me if I've got my maths wrong! :)

How do we find ways of encouraging single adults into the church scene without making them feel uncomfortable because of all the married people around them?

Bradley Wright

This morning I discovered Bradley Wright's blog, along with his recently published book (the official publishing date is July), called Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites...and Other Lies You've Been Told: A Sociologist Shatters Myths From the Secular and Christian Media.

Wright is a sociologist at the University of Connecticut. On his blog he likes to spend time digging into statistics to see if they say what we're told they say - in other words, he's a man after my own heart (a blogger and suspicious of how stats are often interpreted). It's not that he doesn't believe the stats; but he wants to make sure we're getting real information out of them, not false.

For instance, in a post he wrote late last year called The Creation of a Useful, but Inaccurate, Statistic he takes George Barna to task for 'proving' something from a very small sample (270 participants) and from questions that were ambiguous to say the least. This is typical of Wright's approach, and typical of the information in his book too, by the sound of it.

I think Barna does a pretty good job overall, but I do question some of his polls and surveys. Having taken part in a good number of surveys myself over the years, and having had to put more than one together, I know how easy it is for the wrong questions to be asked - with the result that the wrong answers get recorded, and misinformation arises.

I'm going to be adding Wright to my list of blogs needing to be read on a regular basis. When it comes to the world of stats, we need all the insight and clarity we can get.

The Risk for Children

In the latest Maxim Institute newsletter, the following comments are made in regard to the Death and serious injury from assault of children aged under 5 years in Aotearoa New Zealand report...

According to the review, risk factors which increase the likelihood of a child suffering "fatal assault or serious injury" before their fifth birthday, include children living with "non-biological" fathers, a background of domestic violence, "mental illness," "alcohol and drug abuse," poverty and the ethnicity of the child. It confronts us with an uncomfortable statistic: "In New Zealand, Maori ethnicity is a static risk factor" associated with a six-fold greater risk for male children and a three-fold greater risk for female children. Higher risks are also associated with mothers who are young and have a low level of education. The review notes that "identified risk factors seldom occur in isolation," with the families at greatest risk ticking more than one of these boxes.

Let's be honest, none of this is news. And it has little to do with the anti-smacking 'law' that came into force last year.

Being honest about the risk factors will only go so far if we are not also willing to examine, evaluate and critique the efficacy of interventions, as the second half of the review begins to do. It identifies home visitation and parent training programmes as helpful responses to the issue of abuse. These programmes involve professionals working with families to connect them with vital services and improve their parenting. The report notes that these programmes are effective for some families, particularly when relationships with workers are strong and persistent, and when a "broad range of needs" is addressed. "Case co-ordination" between agencies is also vital—the same families continually pop up in a variety of contexts, but the co-ordination and communication between agencies is often lacking. While the Commissioner's chief response to the report was to call for funding for a "shaken baby prevention programme," our response needs to be broader than that. It needs to address all the causes of death and the range of effective interventions that the report outlines.

All this is good stuff....and knowing about this, how can the Church be involved and help? No doubt, parts of the church are already working in these areas, but if it's something that we can help further with, let's do it.

Reading the Numbers Rightly

On the Albran Rountable blog, Wayne Floyd writes: Americans are notorious for trying to quantify everything; we take our numbers very religiously. [I think, New Zealanders are not much different]

“Clergy Voices: Findings from the 2008 Mainline Protestant Clergy Voices Survey” is one recent and provocative encyclopedia of statistics profiling the ordained leadership of current Mainline Protestants. A colleague just plopped the hefty 45 page report on my desk, and I’ll resist commenting on it until I’ve actually read it!

Even then, it’s not easy to decide the significance of the quantitative ‘facts’ we’ve read.

Floyd then goes on to look at the problems with numbers - and how we read them. For example, did the United Church of Christ really triple in size between 1990 and 2001, and then halve again before 2008 - or were the questions asked to learn these figures completely different?

And another area for innovation in the church

An increasing number of older New Zealanders past retiring age are continuing to work, many of them in part-time roles.

A recent report from Statistics NZ shows that the number of people aged 65 years and over in the workforce rose 278% between 1986 and 2006 – from 22,000 to 82,000 driven by such factors as skills shortages, increased life expectancy, more part-time opportunities, the growth of the service industry and ... a buoyant economy.

Although this trend may not survive the current downturn it put us second only to Japan for “elder” labour participation in OECD countries – in 2006, one in six older New Zealanders remained in the workforce with 66% of the women and 43% of the men holding part-time jobs.

slightly amended from the NZIM Managers’ Update, March 2009

Again, where what implications does this have for churches and their attitudes to older people?

Stats and Stories

As someone who spends a good deal of his working week checking out stats and figures, trying to make sense of what's happening in the world by looking at charts and tables, it was good to have a reminder from the Maxim Institute's newsletter that it's easy to lose track of the real people behind all the numbers. I quote:
We need a medium which will tell us the same truth as research reports, but one which is able to move us, to touch our hearts, and compel us to act. In fact, we need stories. An article in the Journal of Development Studies released earlier this year suggested just that—that the hidden power of the novel is a much undervalued spur to thought and action. Ask most people what they know about life in Afghanistan and they are much more able to summon up images of what they read in The Kite Runner (one of the books referred to in the study) than they are to talk about what they didn't read in Supporting the Development of Children's Groups and Networks in Afghanistan: Reflections on Practice and Possibilities.
and...
The power of a novel differs from that of a report—it comes from its recognition that human beings have stories. Instead of merely words on a page, the story they encompass becomes one we can relate to, one in which we can join. The world is far from simple and there are issues that matter deeply all around us. But amidst the "cacophony of voices" we need to hear the voice of the one—whether it asks for justice or freedom or compassion. And in this lies the power of the writer because it is characters, faces and stories which have the power to connect us individually with the issues of importance, to persuade us that they matter, to bring them in all their force before our shaded eyes.

This is why, in the National Mission Office, we're always looking for stories, about people, about the way mission is being done in a particular church or parish or presbytery, about failures, and successes. About real human beings rather than numbers. We love numbers, and they do tell us things that stories don't, but they're not the be all and end all.

If you have stories to tell, why not drop me a line on my email? You'll find it by clicking on the profile.

Is there an increase or isn't there?

New Zealand's latest crime statistics were released this week, showing an improvement in Police resolution of crime, but an increase in the amount of reported family violence.
The news release from the Police highlights that "New Zealand has had the lowest murder rate for a decade" and that they also "resolved 9,539 more offences in 2007 than the previous year." Although there were "fewer offences of homicide (7 percent fewer) and kidnapping (2 percent fewer)," the violence category overall rose by 12.3 percent. This "increase in the violence category was driven almost entirely by recorded family violence," which increased by 35 percent.
This, according to the release, "is not surprising" given the "huge focus on family violence" in the media, potentially distorting the statistics by increasing the amount of family violence reported and not necessarily the amount committed.

Male-bashing

Let’s have some sanity in the campaign against domestic violence, by Bill Ralston.

Ralston may not be everyone's cup of tea, and some of his opinion columns that have been appearing in the NZ Listener in the last few months probably irritate more than a few people.

This particular column begins:

Recently you might have noticed people wandering about wearing white ribbons in solidarity with the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Men wear them to show that they do not tolerate or condone violence against women. Presumably if you don’t wear a ribbon, it shows that you do condone and tolerate it, in which case Auckland males must be wickedly violent because I never saw any of them wearing a ribbon.

In New Zealand, White Ribbon Day was just one of the 16 days of Activism Against Gender Violence that finish on December 10. The gender violence it refers to is violence by the male gender against the female gender.

It's an interesting essay on how statistics can be manipulated by people with different agendas, and while Ralston certainly doesn't condone violence against women, he wants the figures to be looked at a little more carefully.