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In this update from the environmental reporting programme you’ll find information about the upcoming marine environment report; your views on environment reports; the Environmental Reporting Act; the Commissioner’s critique; and what’s coming up.

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August, 2017

In this issue

Estimating ethnic infant mortality
Interested in injury data?
Alpha goes to beta
Most Kiwis are satisfied with life and feel connected to family and Aotearoa
Using data to get the best for premature babies
Telling open government data-use stories
New consumers price index infographic
Labour Market Statistics (Income) coming up

Estimating ethnic infant mortality


Estimating infant mortality by ethnicity – New methods for dealing with inconsistent ethnic reporting and small numbers is a new addition to Stats NZ’s working paper series. The paper looks at the problem of inconsistent ethnicity for birth and death registrations when calculating infant mortality rates. We used data linking death records to birth records and dealt with unlinked records through a technique called multiple imputation. We addressed the problem of small counts by fitting Bayesian hierarchical models, which smooth through the random variation.

Depending on which measures are used, inconsistent reporting of ethnicity can have a major effect on estimated mortality rates. Despite considerable uncertainty, there are large differences in infant mortality rates across ethnic groups.

Although further work is required to test the robustness of the methods outlined in the paper, and to extend them to more than two ethnicities, we think they could be used to produce series for infant mortality rates by ethnic group.

Interested in injury data?


On 31 August 2017, Stats NZ will publish Work-related Claims: 2016, using Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) data.

This information release is about claims accepted by the ACC for work-related injuries. The release covers two years of data: a finalised 2015 year and a provisional 2016 year. We’ll also publish trends data, which allows customers to make annual comparisons since 2002. The release will include data on the total number of injury claims, claims for entitlement payments, and claims for fatal injuries.

The statistics provide breakdowns of the data for typical social characteristics such as age, sex, ethnicity, and employment status, as well as by geography, occupation, industry, body site of injury, and type of injury. We also include incidence rates, number of claims, and percentages.

The incidence rates in this release are calculated using updated full-time equivalent employee (FTE) estimates from the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS).  The HLFS redevelopment in 2016 improved the derivation of ‘usual hours worked’ and contributed to an overall increase in FTEs. This means changes in the provisional incidence rates may be due to questionnaire changes rather than a real-life effect.

Tables will also be available on NZ.Stat as part of the release, allowing customers to cross-tabulate these statistics.

Alpha goes to beta


We’ve been continuing to make changes to our alpha website based on customer feedback, to make Stats NZ data easier to find. Development has now reached a point where the website can move to a beta release.

During the beta phase we will publish all our news and information releases on both our current website and the beta site. We’ll keep testing our design to ensure we are improving customer access and use of our data.

We expect the beta site to become our main site in the coming months. Please note that when this happens you will still be able to access all existing website content, and there will be no changes to Infoshare and NZ.Stat.

We welcome feedback about our beta site

Most Kiwis are satisfied with life and feel connected to family and Aotearoa

According to New Zealand’s biggest survey of well-being – the General Social Survey (GSS), released on 20 July – most New Zealanders are satisfied with life. Around 83 percent of us rated our overall life satisfaction at 7 or above on a 0–10 scale. The result was similar in 2014. We also said we have a strong sense of belonging to family and to country.

Freedom, rights, and peace; and the natural scenery and environment, rated as extremely important factors in defining New Zealand the survey of almost 9,000 New Zealanders shows. Older people were more likely than young people to rate farming as extremely important in defining New Zealand.

The GSS was carried out around the country in 2016/17, eight years after the first survey in 2008/09. In the latest GSS about 18 percent of New Zealanders said they had more than enough money to meet everyday needs, up from around 13 percent in 2008. Just under 11 percent of people said they did not have enough money to meet their needs for housing, food, clothing, and necessities. This was down from the 15 percent who said they did not have enough for the basics in 2008.

“The economy was shrinking in 2008, with GDP down in each quarter that year and the unemployment rate rising too,” senior analyst Dr Rosemary Goodyear said. “In contrast, in 2016 the economy grew more than 3 percent.”

As well as asking about having enough to live on, the GSS also asked if people had good health, were lonely, or had problems with their housing. In 2016, just under one-quarter (24 percent) of New Zealanders had good outcomes in all four of these aspects of life. However, almost 5 percent did not have any good outcomes.

“One in 20 people reported a poor outcome in these four aspects of life and more than half of those people rated their overall satisfaction with life at 6 or less on a scale of zero to 10,” Dr Goodyear said.

For the first time the GSS included disability status. The 2016/17 survey had new questions that allowed separate findings for disabled and non-disabled people. The specific measure used to identify disabled people is the Washington Group Short Set.

See NZ General Social Survey for more details.

Using data to get the best for premature babies

Statistics Minister Scott Simpson has released the first in a series of videos that demonstrate how Stats NZ’s data is being used to benefit New Zealanders.

The Better Data, Better Lives: Long-term outcomes for premature babies video looks at work being done by researchers from Capital and Coast District Health Board and the University of Otago in Wellington into the lives of premature babies.

The study uses Stats NZ’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) to look at a range of life events – including before-school checks, social development, health conditions, and educational qualifications – to understand the issues and enable better decisions and services to meet babies’ needs.

The IDI is a large database containing data about people and households in New Zealand. The data is collected from government agencies, non-government organisations, and surveys run by Stats NZ, such as the census. Data in the IDI is used to answer complex questions that affect New Zealanders.

Telling open government data-use stories

Through June and July, Stats NZ and data.govt.nz have been engaging with open government data users through workshops, interviews, and online channels. The engagement has two purposes:

  • to demonstrate the value of open government data – helping to bring about a culture shift within government to be ‘open by design’ (while ensuring private information is always protected)
  • to provide opportunities for open data users to share achievements, ideas, experiences, and challenges – inspiring innovation and enterprise, and informing government data publishers about what data users want and need.

New case studies will soon be appearing on data.govt.nz, along with a blog post discussing trends and themes that emerged during the engagement.

New consumers price index infographic

What is the consumers price index? is an animated infographic to help people better understand the consumers price index (CPI).

It provides a simple, fun, and interactive way to demonstrate how CPI data is collected, adjusted, and being used. We encourage you to share the animation with your customers.

Labour Market Statistics (Income) coming up

Labour Market Statistics (Income): June 2017 quarter will be released on 1 September 2017. This release will include income information collected as part of the June 2017 quarter’s Household Labour Force Survey. We’ve been able to bring this release forward from October due to improvements in processing the data.

Labour market statistics has more information about the income and other labour market releases.

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Find out what's coming up

View our release calendar.

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See changes by date for full notices about Infoshare data changes.

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