A research note by the Parliamentary Library
Although gross indicators of economic performance such as gross domestic product (GDP) continue to be emphasised, there is a growing appreciation that policy makers must go beyond limited economic statistics if a fuller picture of well-being and societal progress is to be measured.
Additionally, if more encompassing measures of well-being in developed nations are used, they enable comparisons - both over time and across regions.
This provides a way for policy makers to evaluate what works, for governments to maximise the return on their investment in public programmes, and for communities to target the improvements they need to make.
Recently released regional well-being data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) provides information about where the 34 member countries and their regions rank on eight well-being measures that matter in people’s lives: jobs, income, education, health, civic engagement, safety, access to services, and environment.
Those eight measures are based on ten objective statistical indicators: employment and unemployment rates, household income, level of education in the workforce, life expectancy, mortality rates, voter turnout, homicide rates, broadband access, and particulate matter in the air.
Figure 1 below shows that New Zealand as a whole is in the top half of the OECD (performing better relative to the OECD median) across seven of the nine indicators released by the OECD: employment rate (7.5 percentage points above the median); voter turnout (4.6 percentage points above); broadband access (2.3 percentage points above); life expectancy (0.4 percent above); the murder rate (18.0 percent below the OECD median); the unemployment rate (1 percentage point below); the mortality rate (0.5 percent below the OECD median).
For example, three-quarters (75.1 percent) of the New Zealand workforce is employed, which is 7.5 percentage points above the OECD employment rate of 67.6 percent. New Zealand ranks as the seventh-highest in the OECD on this measure of well-being.
Figure 1: New Zealand’s measures of well-being relative to the OECD median
Source: OECD Regional Well-Being; http://www.oecdregionalwellbeing.org/
New Zealand also ranks comparatively well in terms of safety (13 out of 34), which is measured by the murder rate.
On this measure the country’s 0.96 murders per 100,000 people is 18.0 percent below the OECD median of 1.18, meaning that 12 of the 34 members of the OECD have lower murder rates than New Zealand. The OECD also provides regional data, which shows the North Island’s murder rate of 0.98 murders per 100,000 people is around nine percent higher than the South Island’s rate of 0.90 murders per 100 000 people.
New Zealand’s best ranking is in the environment category (as measured by the level of air pollution), where it is ranked first equal with Iceland. However, the actual data on air pollution, measured by concentrations of particulate, will not be released until October 2014 and so New Zealand’s performance relative the OECD median cannot be shown in Figure 1.
New Zealand’s rankings in the health category are close to the OECD median in the two measures recorded. New Zealanders have a life expectancy of 81.2 years, just above the OECD median of 80.9 years—New Zealand ranks 13 of 34 on this measure. New Zealand’s mortality rate of 7.8 deaths per 1,000 people was also slightly better than the OECD median of 7.9 deaths per 1,000 people.
New Zealand is in the bottom half of the OECD on two of nine OECD indicators as shown in Figure 1: household disposable income per capita (9.8 percent below the OECD median); and percentage of the labour force with at least a secondary education (7.7 percentage points below the median).
Although almost three-quarters (73.3 percent) of the New Zealand labour force has a secondary education, this is the eighth-lowest share among the 34-member OECD and New Zealand’s lowest rank overall (27th). Only seven OECD countries have lower shares: Greece (70.1 percent); Iceland (67.0 percent); Italy (64.6 percent); Spain (58.4 percent); Portugal (41.1 percent); Mexico (40.0 percent); Turkey (38.3 percent).
New Zealand also ranks comparatively low (21st) in average household disposable income per capita where the figure of $14,164 ($US PPP) places the country in the bottom half of the OECD. The North Island’s average household disposable income of $13,768 is around nine percent lower than that of the South Island’s $15,435. However Australia has the largest variation in regional income where Tasmania’s average household disposable income of $21,417 per capita is 92 percent below that of the Australian Capital Territory ($41,051).
Apart from the variation in average household disposable income noted above, the biggest differences between the North and South Island were found in the employment rate (85.7 percent in the South Island; 71.8 percent in the North Island), and the unemployment rate (5.0 percent in the South Island compared to 7.1 percent in the North Island).
Overall, New Zealanders have a similar level of well-being to people living in Northern Norway, Iceland’s capital region, north-middle Sweden, and Canada’s Prince Edward Island.
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This is a research note published by the Parliamentary Library.
Source:
OECD OECD Regional Well-Being: A Closer Measure of Life.
Dr John Wilson, Research Services Analyst
5 Comments
New Zealand’s rankings in the health category are close to the OECD median in the two measures recorded. New Zealanders have a life expectancy of 81.2 years, just above the OECD median of 80.9 years—New Zealand ranks 13 of 34 on this measure.
Dr John Wilson may wish to undertake some domestic analysis beyond restating OECD observations. NZ public health issues are glaring if one is to believe local investigators.
New Zealand’s public health system has been in crisis for so long that its failings – and deteriorating performance vis a vis other developed countries – now tend to be treated as its normal mode of being. Unmet needs are rife. In 2013, a major survey of the health system’s unmet needs reported that some 170,000 Kiwis are being turned down every year from getting onto public health waiting lists. While 280,000 Kiwis a year met the clinical threshold for elective surgery, only 110,000 were being placed on the waiting list.
To function at all, the public health system has become increasingly reliant on internationally trained medical graduates (IMGs) to cope with senior doctor shortages, while also proving increasingly unable to retain them here. (New Zealand’s dependency on IMGs to meet its health needs is the highest in the OECD.) As the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) pointed out in a major report released in August, overseas trained senior doctors had comprised 35% of the public health workforce in 2000 (already a high proportion by international standards) and this has risen to 42%, on 2012 figures. Even so, these foreign doctors and specialists are leaving at an accelerating rate – apparently in response to the toxic combination of high clinical workloads, relatively poor wages and conditions, and chronic delays in the provision of essential equipment. Judging by the ASMS figures, of those IMGs who first registered in 2011, nearly 40% were no longer practising in New Zealand one year later, which is more than double the percentage loss of five years earlier. Read more
The pay rate is quite good, but not as gouging as other countries.
What really screws things up is the astonishing level of _bureaucracy_ in NZ, and it is expected to be done by consultants. Add in the horrendous failure of government bureauracy to maintain a working carrer environment for these people it's no wonder they find greener pastures elsewhere. You can't keep beating a free person and expect them to find it acceptable, their skills are in demand elsewhere so when they get treated like the rest of NZ they can just leave...
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