Age-adjusted disability prevalence rate in New Zealand

By ethnic group and gender, 2023, age-adjusted rate per 100 people

The following information applies to all values in the table. Year: 2023, Measure: Age-adjusted disability prevalence rate, Grouping variable: Ethnic group, Unit: Percentage
Category	Gender	Age-adjusted rate per 100 people
European	Male	16%
European	Female	19%
Māori	Male	24%
Māori	Female	23%
Pacific Peoples	Male	17%
Pacific Peoples	Female	24%
Asian	Male	11%
Asian	Female	15%
Other	Male	14%
Other	Female	19%

Definitions

A disabled person in this survey is a person with a self-reported (or caregiver-reported for children) long-term difficulty in at least one of the functional domains for their age-group. Where answer options are scaled, the amount of difficulty reported needs to meet a specified threshold.
A functional domain is an aspect of human functioning that is assessed as part of a method for identifying disabled people in a data collection like a survey.
A household in this survey is either one person who usually lives alone, or two or more people who usually live together and share facilities (such as for eating, cooking, or a living area, and bathroom and toilet) and are living in either a private dwelling or in a residential and community care facility.

Changes to data collection/processing

Estimates from the 2023 survey can’t be compared with estimates from previous disability surveys run by Stats NZ due to changes in the way disabled people were identified. The 2023 survey used questions based on those developed by the Washington Group on Disability Statistics (WG). The WG’s work is supported by the United Nations Statistical Commission to improve statistics about disabled people. Shorter versions of the WG question sets are used in other social surveys in New Zealand. This is the first time the 2023 survey has identified disabled people with questions based on those developed by the WG, which means that results can’t be compared with those from previous disability surveys.