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.
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