New Faces, New Futures: New Zealand
Migrants' Income and Assets
Feature box 6.1 Meeting the cost of living in New Zealand
The less a migrant earned, the more likely they felt unable to meet the cost of living in New Zealand. Thirty percent of migrants felt they did not have enough money to meet the cost of living in New Zealand compared with 16 percent who felt they could not meet the cost of living in their previous country. (See Table 6.2.)
| Rating of adequacy of income | Immigration approval category (%) | Total (%) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skilled principal | Skilled secondary | Business category | Family Partner | Family Parent | Pacific category | Other | ||
| Total weighted | 12,490 | 8,470 | 2,190 | 7,020 | 2,300 | 1,620 | 2,140 | 36,220 |
| Previous country1 | ||||||||
| Not enough money | 14.8 | 13.2 | 7.5 | 13.0 | 17.6 | 38.6 | 21.9 | 15.9 |
| Enough money | 54.1 | 55.2 | 50.0 | 61.0 | 68.3 | 47.0 | 56.2 | 56.5 |
| More than enough money | 30.9 | 29.8 | 42.5 | 23.9 | 12.7 | 4.5 | 12.3 | 25.4 |
| Not specified | 0.3 | 1.7 | S | 2.4 | 2.0 | 8.3 | 9.6 | 2.3 |
| Total weighted | 7,640 | 6,500 | 400 | 4,150 | 2,050 | 1,320 | 1,460 | 23,530 |
| New Zealand | ||||||||
| Not enough money | 25.5 | 30.6 | 21.9 | 32.8 | 41.3 | 34.0 | 36.9 | 30.0 |
| Enough money | 61.5 | 58.6 | 63.5 | 57.4 | 49.6 | 55.6 | 50.5 | 58.5 |
| More than enough money | 12.6 | 9.1 | 11.0 | 8.4 | 5.7 | 3.7 | 6.1 | 9.7 |
| Not specified | 0.2 | 1.9 | 3.2 | 1.4 | 3.5 | 6.2 | 6.1 | 1.9 |
Note: 1 Includes migrants who were living in their previous country in the two years before residence approval.
Symbol: S = suppressed for confidentiality reasons.
Insights
- Employed migrants who said they did not have enough money to meet their living costs were more dissatisfied with their job (10 percent) than those with enough or more than enough money (3 percent each).
- Less than 1 percent of employed migrants were dissatisfied with life in New Zealand, regardless of how well their income met their needs.
- Pacific category migrants were most likely to report not having had enough money in their previous country (39 percent), with 34 percent reporting they did not have enough money to meet the cost of living in New Zealand.
- Eight percent of migrants used their savings for everyday things, and 3 percent said their savings were their main source of money for everyday things.
Figure 6.8 shows the relationship between migrants' personal level of income in New Zealand and their ability to meet the cost of living. As expected, migrants on lower incomes reported the most difficulty meeting everyday costs. However, results from the LisNZ pilot study showed that migrants' ability to meet the cost of living improves over time, particularly for Skilled and Business migrants.[50]
Figure 6.8: Ability to meet cost of living in New Zealand by income
