Median personal net worth in New Zealand
By highest qualification, year ended June 2021 & 2024, NZD thousands
| Year ended June | Highest qualification | NZD thousands |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | No qualification | 51 |
| 2024 | Level 1-3 certificate | 60 |
| 2024 | Level 4 certificate | 236 |
| 2024 | Level 5 and 6 diploma | 346 |
| 2024 | Bachelor degree and level 7 qualification | 194 |
| 2024 | Honours or postgraduate diploma/certificate | 372 |
| 2024 | Masters and doctorate degree | 353 |
| 2024 | Other secondary school qualification | 63 |
| 2021 | No qualification | 59 |
| 2021 | Level 1-3 certificate | 47 |
| 2021 | Level 4 certificate | 160 |
| 2021 | Level 5 and 6 diploma | 213 |
| 2021 | Bachelor degree and level 7 qualification | 138 |
| 2021 | Honours or postgraduate diploma/certificate | 209 |
| 2021 | Masters and doctorate degree | 242 |
| 2021 | Other secondary school qualification | 80 |
Notes
The population for means and medians is all people aged 15+, including those with zero net worth. For each asset and liability type, the number of people is those who have a non zero value.
Values are rounded to the nearest thousand. Figures may not sum to stated totals, due to rounding.
Definitions
Net worth: is the value of a person or household’s assets, minus their liabilities.
Assets: are something a person or household owns, such as property or investments.
Liability: is an obligation such as a debt, mortgage, or loan. The liability's holder is obliged, under specific circumstances, to provide a payment or series of payments to whomever they are liable to.
Household: is either one person who usually resides alone, or two or more people who usually reside together and share facilities (eg for eating or cooking) in a private dwelling. A household may contain one or more families, other people in addition to a family, or no families at all, such as unrelated people living together. Statistics New Zealand don't include non-private dwellings such as hostels, or the rest home and hospital sections of retirement homes (serviced apartments within retirement homes are counted as private dwellings).
Data calculation/treatment
Age standardisation: To mitigate the effects of the Māori and Pacific population having a much younger age structure than the total New Zealand population, age standardisation technique was applied. Without age standardisation, median and mean figures for the variable of interest (eg net worth) by age-group, can potentially be distorted. Age standardisation is a commonly applied technique to control such distortions; it allows more meaningful comparisons between the sub-populations.
Imputation: it replaces missing values with actual values from similar respondents. Imputation was carried out both to replace missing values for certain HES income variables, and to impute values for assets and liabilities.
For more information
Limitations of the data
The following caveats were reported by Stats NZ:
- There are occasions where respondents mentioned they have other property, but it is scoped out of the HES part of the questionnaire because it is for business purposes. Sometimes the respondent then did not mention it in the property, business, or trust sections (where we expected they would). This may have resulted in under-reporting of the value of property assets.
- Some respondents said they received superannuation contributions from their employer but did not then give details of a superannuation scheme. This may have lead to under-reporting of superannuation schemes.
- Some respondents did not report all the businesses they owned. Some partners living together in a household responded that they both owned all of a business. Where this was identified and could be verified it was corrected.
- In regards to family trusts, some respondents were unsure of their relationship to the trust, which may have led to fewer respondents identifying as a settlor or quasi settlor. This may have caused an under-reporting of trust wealth.
- To reduce respondent burden, respondents were not asked to provide the value of smaller-value items (eg valuables under $5000). This may have resulted in some under-reporting.
Data provided by
Dataset name
Household Economic Survey: Household net worth statistics Year ended June 2024
Webpage:
https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/household-net-worth-statistics-year-ended-june-2024/
How to find the data
At URL provided, under the Download data section select 'Household net worth statistics: Year ended June 2024 Excel file.
Sheets 7.01, 7.02, 7.03, 7.04, 8.03, 8.04, 10.01 were reformatted by Figure.NZ for processing purposes.
Import & extraction details
File as imported: Household Economic Survey: Household net worth statistics Year ended June 2024
From the dataset Household Economic Survey: Household net worth statistics Year ended June 2024, this data was extracted:
- Sheet: Table6.01
- Range:
C9:R51 - Provided: 640 data points
This data forms the table Net Worth - Mean and median individual net worth by highest qualification 2015–2024.
Dataset originally released on:
September 26, 2025
About this dataset
Household net worth statistics aims to provide a picture of the net worth (wealth) of New Zealanders, by looking at their household assets and liabilities – financial and non-financial.
Method of collection/Data provider
The Net Worth Household Statistics were collected as a component of the Household Economic Survey.
The achieved sample size for HES income 2023/24 was approximately 19155 households. The achieved sample rate was 68.4 percent. The target for the net worth subsample was 5760 households. The final sample included approximately 5357 households, resulting in an achieved sample rate of 67.0 percent.
The target population for HES is the usually resident population of New Zealand living in private dwellings, aged 15 years and over.