Life expectancy at birth in NZ has steadily increased since the 1950’s with a male born in 2018 expected to live 90.3 years and a female 93 years (Statistics NZ, n.d.). At age 65 years, a male can expect to live 27.8 more years and a female 29.4 years (table 8) (Statistics NZ, 2020). The most recent data on life expectancy by ethnicity is based on the death rates in NZ for the period 2012-14. While the gap between life expectancy of Māori and Pacific compared to the total population is reducing, they are still dying at least 5 years younger than the total population average (table 9) (Statistics NZ, n.d.). This gap is evident throughout the age bands but does narrow in the oldest old to less than a year difference across the three ethnicities.

Table 8: Life expectancy by gender, at select ages, for a child born in 2018 (Statistics NZ, 2020).

	Male	Female
0	90.9	93.0
15	76.4	78.5
50	42.4	44.1
65	27.8	29.4
75	9.3	19.7
85	9.9	10.4

 

Table 9: Life expectancy by age based on the death rates in NZ 2012-2014 (Statistics NZ, n.d.)

Life expectancy @ age X	Total NZ	Pacific	Maori
Male
0	79.5	74.5	73.0
15	65.1	60.2	58.7
50	31.8	27.5	26.7
65	18.9	15.6	15.4
75	11.5	9.4	9.5
85	5.9	5.2	5.7
female
0	83.2	78.7	77.1
15	68.7	64.3	62.8
50	34.8	30.9	29.5
65	21.3	18.3	17.5
75	13.3	11.3	11.2
85	6.8	6.1	6.4

References:

Ministry of Social Development. (2016). The Social Report 2016 – Te pūrongo oranga tangata. Wellington Ministry of Social Development 2016.

Statistics NZ. (2020). New Zealand cohort life tables: March 2020 update. New Zealand Government Website. Available from: https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/new-zealand-cohort-life-tables-march-2020-update.

Statistics NZ. (n.d.). Life expectancy. New Zealand Government Website. Available from: http://archive.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/health/life_expectancy/NZLifeTables_HOTP12-14.aspx#gsc.tab=0.