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Life and death in New Zealand

Life and death in New Zealand
Media Release
University of Auckland
24th October 2014

Life and death in New Zealand

Non-Māori New Zealanders held the record for the highest life expectancy in the world from 1870 to 1940. No other country has ever held the record for that long.

Life and death in Aotearoa New Zealand from the first Māori settlement to the 21st century is the focus of a new book by University of Auckland health researcher, Alistair Woodward.

The book, ‘The Healthy Country? A history of life and death in New Zealand’, was written in collaboration with co-author, Professor Tony Blakely from the University of Otago. The authors investigate New Zealanders’ health and longevity which was unsurpassed by other nations until the late 20th Century.

Did Māori or Europeans live longer in 1769? Why were Pākehā New Zealanders the healthiest, longest lived people on the face of the globe for eighty years – and why did Māori not enjoy the same life expectancy? Why were New Zealanders’ health and longevity surpassed by other nations in the late twentieth century?

Through lively text and quantitative analysis, presented in accessible graphics, the authors answer these questions by analysing the impact of nutrition and disease, immigration and unemployment, alcohol and obesity, medicine and vaccination.

The result is a powerful argument about why we live and why we die in this country (and what we might do about it). The Healthy Country? is important reading for anyone interested in the story of New Zealanders and a decisive contribution to debates about health, disease and medicine.

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Alistair Woodward is professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the School of Public Health at the University of Auckland and a former Head of the School of Population Health. His first degree was in medicine and he undertook his postgraduate training in public health in the United Kingdom.

Alistair has a PhD in epidemiology from the University of Adelaide, and was Professor of Public Health at the University of Otago in Wellington until 2004. His research interests include tobacco, radio-frequency radiation and health, transport and injury, and climate change.

He has also worked for the World Health Organization throughout the Pacific, and was on the writing team of the second, third and fourth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Since 2009 he has been an editor of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health.

He has published widely in the international literature on public health issues – from smoking and cycling to the connections between socio-economic status and health.
Some of the key findings from the book includes:

• When James Cook landed in New Zealand, the life expectancy of Europeans and Māori probably differed by no more than ten years. By 1900 non-Māori in New Zealand had 30 more years of life expectancy than Māori.
• Non-Māori held the record for the highest life expectancy in the world from 1870 to 1940. No other country has ever held the record for that long.
• For the last 100 years, New Zealand life expectancy has been increasing at roughly 2 to 2.5 years per decade—that is, a staggering six hours every day.
• If the rate of increase in life expectancy we saw in the 20th century continues into the 21st, life expectancy in the year 2100 will be 100 or more.
• New Zealand set 65 years as the age of eligibility for a pension in 1898 and it remains so in 2014. In the intervening years, life expectancy at birth has increase by about 25 years while the number of years we can expect to live if we reach the age of 65 has almost doubled.
• Alongside long-run upward trends, there have been major reverses. Māori life expectancy crashed with colonization Non-Māori had little if any increase in life expectancy in the 1960s to 1970s due to peaking of the tobacco and heart disease epidemics. And, from the 1980s to 1990s, the gap between Māori and Pakeha life expectancies grew wider.
• Since 1970, stroke and heart disease death rates have fallen by a staggering 80%.
• Compared to 2006 census smoking rates, a smoke-free New Zealand would lead to a 5 year improvement in life expectancy for Māori, and about a 3 year gain for non-Māori.
• If the most deprived 20 percent of the population was only 15 percent worse off in health terms than the top 20 percent, New Zealand’s life expectancy would jump by two to three years, putting this country back at the top of international rankings.
• The big gains in life expectancy in New Zealand historically have followed changes in adult mortality, and this is where the greatest potential lies for further improvements. There are other reasons for investing in child health, but if the goal is increasing life expectancy then adults must be the focus.
‘The Healthy Country? A history of life and death in New Zealand’, by Alistair Woodward and Tony Blakely. Auckland University Press, distributed by Craig Potton Publishing. October 2014. Paperback $49.95


ENDS

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