Statistics New Zealand "Household Expenditure Survey": What Can It Tell Us About "Standard of Living"?

Alison Robins

While much work has been published in New Zealand on the distribution of income, there is a substantial long-standing gap in research-based information about the living standards of New Zealanders. In the absence of such information it is useful to see the extent to which we can use Statistics New Zealand’s Household Expenditure and Income Survey (HEIS) to provide proxy measures of standards of living.

This paper uses 1992/93 HEIS data to examine two issues: how well do measures derived from HEIS data serve as indicators of standards of living, and what do these measures actually tell us about the relative living standards of New Zealanders? The paper argues that there are indeed limitations to using HEIS data to provide indicators of “standard of living”, which mean that the findings should be treated with caution.

The main findings are presented, and the paper provides a discussion of the policy implications this level of analysis allows. It concludes that the availability of amenities to households, while affected by income level, housing costs, age groups and ethnicity, is less varied than might be expected from the much larger variations in equivalent income, and that there is evidence of relative deprivation among particular sub-populations.