DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION PAUL SPOONLEY
A new Aotearoa emerges Paul Spoonley, Distinguished Professor at Massey University, summarises the evolving new landscape of New Zealand’s demography and asks what employers need to be doing now to address these changes.
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n this magazine and elsewhere, a lot of attention has been given to the need to recognise the changing face of Aotearoa, and rightly so, for reasons I will outline here. But often, this diversity is primarily focused on gender and ethnicity. It is much more complicated than that. The decade from 2010 to 2020 has set the scene for a very different New Zealand to emerge. This has several components in terms of what is changing, and COVID-19 has accelerated some of these changes and completely altered others. It is no exaggeration to say that these changes will be transformative, none more so than in our workplaces and how those workplaces interact with the different characteristics and profile of catchment communities.
Ageing
New Zealand had one of the largest and longest-lasting post6
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war baby booms (1945–1965). And those baby boomers started to reach the age of 65 in 2010. In the 2013 Census, 600,000 people were aged over 65. Soon there will be over a million, and they will constitute about a quarter of the New Zealand population. Already, some parts of New Zealand – Thames-Coromandel, Kapiti Coast – have a local population profile that sees 30 per cent or more in this age group. This ageing of the population will characterise more and more regions and smaller towns through the 2020s. I should now hurriedly add that the age of 65 means less and less in terms of when a New Zealander stops working. New Zealand has the second-highest rate in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development of those aged over 65 in paid work (a quarter of all over 65s are still in paid work), and this is expected to keep growing, both for reasons of choice and because some will have to keep working. At Massey University, we have undertaken the annual surveys of employers for Diversity Works New Zealand for some years. What continually surprises me is the lack of awareness – and what is equally
disturbing is the lack of policies – to address the ageing of the population and workforce.
Fertility
New Zealand has had replacement levels of fertility (2.1 births per woman or better) until recently, unlike most of southern Europe, Germany or Japan. But, in 2017, we saw below replacement levels of fertility for the first time. Currently, the birth rate is 1.7 births per woman in New Zealand. This rate is not sufficient to replace the existing population.
What is … surprising is the lack of awareness – and what is equally disturbing is the lack of policies – to address the ageing of the population and workforce. It is a bit more complicated than simply fewer births. There is a growing pattern of delayed first births so that New Zealand women are having their first babies in their mid-thirties or later. And there are fewer teenage pregnancies. Last year, there were more births to women aged 40 or over than to New Zealand teenagers.
