Analysis of Household Crowding

Analysis of Household Crowding

Based on Census 2013 data

Citation: Ministry of Health. 2014. Analysis of Household Crowding
based on Census 2013 data. Wellington: Ministry of Health.

Published in December 2014

by the Ministry of Health
PO Box 5013, Wellington 6145, New Zealand

ISBN 978-0-478-42850-6(online)

HP 5927

This document is available at www.health.govt.nz

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. In essence, you are free to: share ie, copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format; adapt ie, remix, transform and build upon the material. You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the licence and indicate if changes were made.

Authors

This report was written by Rebecca Le Lievre, and Edward Griffin both of the Policy Business Unit, Ministry of Health. The report was commissioned by a cross government team co-led by Helen Sears, Ministry of Business, Employment and Innovation.
Input into the report was also provided by Hillary Sharp, Denise Hutana and Therese Egan, all from the Ministry of Health.

Contents

Authors 3

Key findings 5

Introduction 6

Background 7

Crowding and health 8

Overview of methods 9

Glossary 10

Results 13

National crowding and occupancy rates 13

Implications 24

Conclusion 25

References 26

List of Figures

Figure 1: Proportion of New Zealanders living in crowded conditions, 1991–2013 13

Figure 2: Population (number) living in crowded conditions, 1991–2013 14

Figure 3: Proportion of New Zealanders living in crowded conditions by age group – percent crowded 17

List of Tables

Table 1a: Crowding in New Zealand, 1991–2013* 13

Table 1b: Crowded households in New Zealand 14

Table 1c: Crowding in households with two or more children, where one of the children is aged between 5–14 years* 14

Table 1d: Crowding by DHB* 14

Table 2a: New Zealand occupancy rates* 15

Table 2b: Occupancy rates by DHB region 16

Table 3a: Proportion of crowding by age group – percent crowded 16

Table 3b: Crowding by age group and district health board – percent crowded 17

Table 4a: Crowding by ethnicity 18

Table 5a: Crowding by Jensen Equivalised Annual Household income quintile 19

Table 5b: Crowding in low-income households, by ethnicity and DHB – percent crowded 19

Table 6a: Crowding by tenure of household in New Zealand 20

Table 6b: Crowding in low-income households, by household tenure and DHB – percent crowded* 20

Table 6c: Crowding by sector of landlord for households in rented private dwellings 21

Table 7a: Crowded households by heating type used by residents in New Zealand* 21

Table 7b: Crowding by heating type used by residents, by DHB region 22

Table 8a: Census night DHB region, American Crowding Index: all households 23

Table 8b: Census night DHB region, American Crowding Index: low-income households 23

Key findings

Data from the Census 2013 shows that:

around 10 percent of New Zealanders live in crowded conditions (398,300 people in 74,124 households)

the Counties Manukau DHB region has the greatest proportion of people living in crowded conditions (22%), followed by Auckland (16%) and then Tairawhiti (15%)

children are over represented in crowded households. Over half of crowded households have two or more children (at least one child aged between 5 and 14 years) living in them

two in five Pacific people (38%) and one in five Māori (20%) and Asian (18%) people live in crowded households. This compares to 1 in 25 Europeans (4%)

there has been a 9 percent increase in people living in crowded conditions in the Counties Manukau DHB region (7755 more people) since 2006. This is likely to reflect a population increase in the region

for the lowest household income quintile, 15 percent of households are crowded; for the highest household income quintile just 2 percent of households are crowded

of people living in crowded households nationally, 35,847 (9%) live in households that do not use any form of heating in their houses. The highest percentage (16%) is in the Counties Manukau DHB region, where 14,103 people living in crowded households use no heating.

Introduction

This report was commissioned by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Business, Employment and Innovation to inform cross-agency housing work in the context of crowding as a determinant of health. The report provides a description of household crowding in New Zealand using Census 2013 data. It updates previous work that looked at the distribution of household crowding in New Zealand based on 1995–2006 census data (Baker et al 2006). Finally it provides a platform for further analysis and policy development to reduce crowding, particularly in the context of its impact on rheumatic fever.
The report provides statistical information over time where possible, with short commentary to explain the data. The information is presented nationally and also by district health board (DHB) about the following relationships:

national crowding and occupancy rates

crowding and age

crowding and ethnicity

crowding and income

crowding and housing tenure

crowding and sector of landlord (see glossary)

crowding, fuel use and heating

the effect that visitors have on household crowding.
Results are presented to answer three questions for each topic:

What is the current level in the population and for DHBs?

How has it changed?

Is it the same for everyone?