Social class in New Zealand

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Social class in

first-world country, as a "classless society", but this claim is problematic in a number of ways. Since at least the 1980s it has become easier to distinguish between the wealthy and the underclass
in New Zealand society.

Māori hierarchies

Māori society traditionally placed emphasis on rank, which derived from ancestry (

Te Puea Herangi (niece of King Mahuta) and "kingmaker" Wiremu Tamihana (a younger son of a chief).[1] Tohunga
had special status. Commoners (tūtūā) did not. Until the advent of Christianity in the early 19th-century Māori customarily enslaved prisoners-of-war. Slaves had no rights and could be killed at the will of their master. However their children became free members of the tribe.

Present-day[update] Māori society, though far less hierarchical than traditionally, remains stratified by European standards.[

mana within their communities by virtue of their achievements or learning.[citation needed
]

The myth of the 'classless society'

An egalitarian New Zealand was briefly realised in the decades after the 1936 Budget, when successive governments sponsored a massive state housing programme.

Until the 1980s, it was claimed that New Zealand was a '

William Ball Sutch
in 1966,

Living standards rose in the post-war years through a combination of good prices for exports, borrowing abroad, and the much greater use of internal resources made possible by full production. And as the New Zealand wage structure, taxation system, social security benefits and family farmers combined to make the basic family income fairly high, a higher proportion of people in New Zealand shared the increased amount of goods and services than would have been the case in any other country. This is why most New Zealand families have good housing and extensive durable goods, including a motor-car.[4]

Critiques

Data from a 1973–74 household survey, however, suggested that as many as 20% of parents and 25% of children may have been in families with a material standard of living below that of a couple on the minimum pension.[5]

own their own homes, and own horses (and later cars), while still being categorised as working-class.[6]
Until the advent of compulsory secondary education in the 1930s, class mobility was limited, although much less so than in Britain.

It has also been argued[7] that in New Zealand, race takes the place of class, with Māori and other Polynesians earning less, usually having lower living standards and levels of education, and usually working in lower earning jobs than New Zealanders of European descent. They also face prejudice akin to that facing working-class people in many European countries.

New Zealanders'

Sir Edmund Hillary is so admired in New Zealand; despite being the first person to climb Mount Everest, he was always very modest[citation needed]. Extreme humility was arguably partly responsible for the early death of Prime Minister Norman Kirk, who might have survived his various health problems had he used his status to get preferential treatment from the public health system, or used private healthcare.[8]

Modern house at Marsden Cove, Northland, New Zealand.

Rogernomics and inequality

New Zealand's claims[9] to be a classless society were seriously undermined in the 1980s and 1990s by the economic reforms of the fourth Labour government and its successor, the fourth National government. The reforms (sometimes called Rogernomics) made by these governments severely weakened the power of unions, removed a lot of protection from workers, cut social welfare benefits and made state housing less affordable. After these reforms, the gap between rich and poor New Zealanders was increased dramatically,[10][11][12][13] with the incomes of the richest 10% of New Zealanders advancing while the other 90% stayed largely static. In addition the number of New Zealanders living in poverty is much higher than in the 1970s.[14][15] In an article entitled "Countries with the Biggest Gaps Between Rich and Poor",[16] BusinessWeek ranked New Zealand at 6th in the world:

The U.N. Development Program recently came out with a report looking, among other things, at income inequality worldwide... According to the OECD, New Zealand had the biggest rise in inequality among member nations in the two decades starting in the mid-1980s.

Although wealth is much more unevenly distributed than previously, New Zealand still lacks most of the overt signals of class which mark countries such as the United States. Most people do not care what others' parents do for a living, who a person is descended from, or where they went to school, and New Zealanders almost invariably have more respect for those who have earned their money through hard work than those who have inherited it or made it through investment.[citation needed]

Consequences

The trend of greater social disparity has also seen a change in attitudes.[17] Younger New Zealanders increasingly accept inequality as an unavoidable social reality, and egalitarian concerns are less popular.

The 'Brain Drain' (emigration of skilled young workers) is a troubling phenomenon for the Government, and often cited by Opposition parties in election campaigns. Since 1999, university graduates have increasingly chosen to live and work abroad. Studies suggest that around 25% of kiwi graduates will emigrate upon graduation, usually selecting

UK or Canada as their new home.[citation needed
]

Measuring social strata

Elley-Irving 1972

In 1972 Elley and Irving[18] published Socioeconomic Status in New Zealand, which became one of the most cited papers in New Zealand social sciences.[18] They outlined a socioeconomic index, now known as 'Elley-Irving (E-I)', based on 1966 Census data. E-I proposed six social strata based upon education and income, and grouped by occupation.

The publication of the scale was welcomed by many researchers but regarded with suspicion by a number of lay critics who presumably clung to the belief that New Zealand was still a classless society. One newspaper headlined the production of a "snobbery scale". Such characterizations, and the numerous critics who misinterpreted its intentions, no doubt added to the frequency of its citing, but it is true that many researchers have made appropriate use of it for its original purpose. It is cited often because it is a useful tool.

— Warwick B. Elley, describing the impact of his paper[18]

NZSEI 1996

In the 1990s,

P. Davis et al. published New Zealand Socioeconomic Index of Occupational Status,[19] known as NZSEI. It was based on a 'returns to human capital' model of the stratification process and originally used data from the 1991 New Zealand census (n=1,051,926) to generate scores for 97 occupational groups. It was later updated using 2006 Census data.[20] NZSEI is a linear scale of ranked occupation, produced using an algorithm involving age, income and education, and aggregated to six discrete groupings (called Socio-economic Status, SES) to enable comparison with E-I and ISEI.[21]

NZSEI96:[22] Absolute and percentage sex differences in mean income and education
Class Population

distribution

Mean income

($000)

Income diff.

by sex (M-F)

Mean years of

Education

Education diff.

by sex (M-F)

SES % Males Females % diff[23] $000s Males Females % diff[23] Years
1 6.3 67 50 34 17 14.4 14.8 −3 −0.4
2 6.6 51 42 21 9 14.7 15.1 −3 −0.4
3 27.6 45 35 27 10 12.9 13.3 −3 −0.4
4 20.5 33 35 −6 −2 11.9 12.0 −1 −0.1
5 18.7 32 30 7 2 11.7 12.1 −3 −0.4
6 20.2 29 26 12 3 11.9 11.8 1 0.1

According to the above data, the average income reported by males is considerably higher than that of females for five of the socioeconomic groups. With the exception of SES group four where the female income is higher, males earn on average between 7 and 34% more than females.

The NZSEI is derived from Census data of employed people, but it can be extended to most of the population using previous occupation (if retired or currently unemployed), or the occupation of the household's main income earner.[24]

Other indices

  • The NZDep2006 Index of Deprivation[25] is an index of geographic deprivation based upon 9 variables—telephone, benefit, unemployment, household income, car access, single parent family, no qualifications, home ownership, overcrowding.
  • Caldwell & Brown[26] published a popular book, which identified eight "hidden tribes" in New Zealand, labelling them after various towns or suburbs: North Shore, Grey Lynn, Balclutha, Remuera, Otara, Raglan, Cuba Street, Papatoetoe.
  • In 2013, Statistics New Zealand published "New Zealand socio-economic index 2006" (NZSEI06) using data from the 2006 census and updated statistical techniques.[27] A newer version of the above table is on page 54 of the report.
  • In the New Zealand education system, "decile" is a key measure of socioeconomic status used to target funding and support schools.[28][29]

References

  1. ^ Wiremu Tamihana in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography
  2. ^ Sinclair, Keith (1969), A History of New Zealand, 2nd edn, p. 285.
  3. ISBN 978-0-7233-0349-7
    .
  4. OCLC 1056114268
    .
  5. ISBN 9780900392283
    .
  6. ISBN 9780713991710
    .
  7. ISBN 978-0582717527
    .
  8. ISBN 978-0589013509
    .
  9. ^ "Show a bit of Class", article by Joanne Black in the New Zealand Listener
  10. ^ In February 1999 Statistics New Zealand published Incomes Archived 26 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine, a report tracing changes in the distribution of New Zealanders' incomes from 1982 to 1996, one of the most eventful periods in our economic history. It found that the gap between high and low income households had grown significantly and that this increase in income inequality occurred at both personal and household levels.
  11. ISBN 0-478-20705-0. Retrieved from stats.govt.nz Archived 27 November 2007 at the Wayback Machine
    , 26 February 2009.
  12. ^ O'Dea (2000): The Changes in New Zealand's Income Distribution, NZ Treasury
  13. ^ Tim Hazledine, Greedy warriors of privilege threaten our Decent Society, NZ Herald, 30 December 2011
  14. ^ Te Ara, The Encyclopedia of New Zealand: Distribution of disposable income, 1982 and 1996, retrieved 27 October 2009.
  15. ISBN 1-86950-283-3
    .
  16. ^ Yahoo! Finance, Countries with the Biggest Gaps Between Rich and Poor Archived 8 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Bruce Einhorn, 16 October 2009.
  17. ^ Ruth Laugesen & Joanne Black, All Things Being Equal, New Zealand Listener, 1–7 May 2010
  18. ^ a b c Elley, W B & Irving I C: A socio-economic index for New Zealand based on levels of education and income from the 1966 census, NZ J. Educ. Stud. 7:153–67, 1972
  19. ^ Davis, McLeod, Ransom, Ongley: New Zealand Socioeconomic Index of Occupational Status[permanent dead link], pub. October 1997 by Statistics New Zealand
  20. '^ New Zealand Socio-Economic index, 'A Users Guide, Otago University. Accessed 20 December 2019.
  21. ^ ISEI: International Socioeconomic Index of Occupational Status
  22. ^ Data drawn from the 1991 New Zealand census (n=1,051,926) is used in the construction of the NZSEI, and the model is applied to all full-time workers aged between 21 and 69.
  23. ^ a b Percentage difference between males and females: 100*(M-F)/F
  24. ISSN 1173-0250
    .
  25. ^ Salmond, Crampton, Atkinson: NZDep2006 Index of Deprivation, Aug/Sep 2007
  26. ISBN 978-0-473-11693-4
  27. ISBN 978-0-478-40833-1
    . Wellington: Statistics New Zealand.
  28. ^ "School deciles". education.govt.nz. Archived from the original on 19 September 2017. Retrieved 2 August 2017.
  29. ^ "NZ Schools: The decile system". PPTA.org.nz. PPTA. Archived from the original on 2 August 2017. Retrieved 2 August 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
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