Unmet need refers to situations where a disabled person does not have something they need, or when they have it in inadequate quantities or quality.
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.
Data calculation/treatment
People who only belong to an ethnic group other than European, Māori, Pacific, or Asian, or whose ethnic group is unknown, are included in the total column only. Ethnicity data comes from Census 2023.
People with a gender other than male or female, or where gender was not provided, are included in the total estimates only.
Limitations of the data
This dataset is only representative of people living in households. ‘Households’ refers to people who live alone or with others in either private dwellings or community-based residential care facilities (these are living arrangements where people are supported to live in the community). The survey did not survey people living in aged-care facilities and long-stay hospitals or in other non-private dwellings (eg, hotels, university halls, and prisons).
From the dataset Household Disability Survey: Experiences and outcomes of disabled people - updated 2023, this data was extracted:
Sheet: Table 12 Unmet need
Range: B13:F66
Provided: 140 data points
Dataset originally released on:
March 31, 2025
Purpose of collection
The 2023 Household Disability Survey (HDS) was designed to provide estimates of disability prevalence among people living in New Zealand households, and information about their experiences and needs.
The HDS is an important source of official statistics about disabled people in New Zealand and helps to show how well they are faring compared with non-disabled people.
The 2023 HDS sample was selected from the 2023 Census of Population and Dwellings (2023 Census).