Ethnic Fertility Trends: Convergence of Diverse Patterns in New Zealand?

Kim Dunstan, Statistics New Zealand

New Zealand’s birth rates – among the highest in the OECD over the last 70 years – have driven national and local population growth. However, New Zealand’s period total fertility rates have dropped significantly over the last 15 years, while international migration has increased its contribution to population growth. Period fertility measures are always susceptible to temporal social and economic factors, but the cohort measures are unequivocal: New Zealand couples are having fewer children with each successive generation. A wider array of fertility measures – including completed fertility and childlessness rates – all indicate sustained fertility declines across New Zealand’s ethnic subpopulations. Despite these trends, fertility patterns continue to be a key driver of changes in the ethnic make-up of New Zealand. It is not just differences in fertility rates, but the combination with differences in age structure and intermarriage that are important. We look at whether ethnic fertility rates are converging, or whether fertility differentials are widening. This is of broad interest to observers of demographic transition theory. It is also a fundamental question for projection practitioners considering future fertility assumptions and how ethnic subpopulations will evolve over the coming decades.

Keywords: Fertility, The Demography of Indigenous Populations, Population projections, forecasts, and estimations

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