NZ Wiki

 

Time Magazine. New Zealand's violence has an international reputation.

Time Magazine. New Zealand’s violence has an international reputation.

Here are some of the less well known about facts and figures for New Zealand. Unfortunately some of them make for very grim reading.

Let your mouse hover over the “NZ Facts & Stats” tab above this page to look at more sub- pages on this topic, a list of which appear here

General

Despite propaganda to the contrary crime rates in NZ are actually very high.

Says who? well the OECD for one. It says “New Zealand is second only to Ireland in 26 OECD countries in internationally comparable data on vehicle, theft and contact crimes. 22% of New Zealanders experienced such a crime in a 12-month period, compared to an OECD average of 16%.” You’re more likely to experience this type of crime in New Zealand than in almost any other country in the OECD.

In August 2015, half way through a month where violent crimes dominated the NZ headlines, an international report revealed that New Zealand is not one of the world’s safest countries, its not even close.

New Zealand is ranked 41st in the world for safety, in an index that is based on seven data categories – population, CO2 emissions, life expectancy; and per capita rates of police personnel, traffic deaths, thefts and assaults.

When just assaults alone are assessed, New Zealand ranks the 102nd worst country out of the 107 who reported their data.

In 2009 there was a sharp rise in home invasions.There were 112 compared to 85 in 2008. The attacks are happening in both rural and city areas, see link and link.

An independent think tank, The New Zealand Institute released a study which showed that New Zealand has the fifth highest murder rate (assault mortality) in the OECD.

A UNICEF Report Ranks NZ as among the worst in OECD for child abuse. A 2003 UNICEF report showed that New Zealand has one of the highest rates of child death from maltreatment (physical abuse and neglect) among rich OECD countries. NZ ranked 25th on a league table of 27 countries with 1.2 deaths per 100,000 children. For two examples of what goes on read “Man jailed for shooting daughter and “Nia Glassie“

New Zealand, along with Norway, is unusual in that suicide rates for young adults are greater than for older people. Most OECD countries have higher suicide rates for older people.

The NZ economy is among the most indebted in the OECD and its living standards lag behind many other OECD member. Relatively low labour productivity growth  since the 1970s “has opened up a large income gap relative to the OECD average and an even greater one with leading countries such as the United States. The poor productivity performance is explained to some extent by New Zealand’s special geographic situation, which hinders the transfer of human, physical and technological capital from abroad, but also to sub-optimal policies in a number of areas” for more see link

For more detailed information click on any of the sub-pages under “NZ Facts and Stats” in the menu bar above.

Other interesting data
These are NZ’s OECD and World rankings: (click on links for data sources)
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1st highest country for
*Property crime victims
*Car ownership – 720 per 1000 people, even more than the USA’s 675 per 1000 (2005)
*Rape victims In NZ only 9% of sexual offences get reported to police, and of those only 13% of rapes resulted in convictions. The median age of victims is 23 and Europeans account for 61% of the victims – See ‘Conviction rate in sex cases‘
.
2nd highest country for
.
3rd highest country for

7th fattest country in the world
62.7% of New Zealanders are obese according to the WHO, Kids watching too much TV and ‘modern development’ mostly to blame

8th highest country for Economic Crime (Fraud)
* See PWC Economic Crime Survey

For Road Death and Injury Statistics,  see: Road Death Toll.