A large number of Census based social and household maps have been produced for this report, rather than providing commentary on each map, general explanatory pieces will be provided regarding ethnic NZDep maps only. Common themes among outermost legend classes will be given across multiple social and household maps rather than individual patterns.
The Meshblock decile NZDep map shows a patchwork pattern with local clustering trends. This indicates distinct variation at the sub-neighbourhood level which is smoothed over at the CAU quintile level. This should provide a basis for some caution when using more aggregated forms of NZDep when describing communities.
A second issue in using NZDep for health funding, planning, and targeting is the stability of NZDep scores. While there are multiple reasons for change (migration, growth, new housing developments, Census drift, etc), and the index authors warn against making direct comparisons, it is worth noting that widespread change does occur between editions (Figure 30). Such changes, while unclear in nature, can have implications where planning and funding are overly reliant on NZDep.
The remaining NZDep maps each use an ethnic specific cartogram to provide some indication or relative distribution of ethnicity by NZDep. While all maps share the same key (NZDep06 quintiles), the relative size of each CAU indicates the size of the community in it. Therefore large dark green areas depict large populations of that ethnic group as residing on the most deprived CAU (on a quintile scale). By way of comparison, the total population NZDep cartogram (Figure 31a) has space more or less equally divided between the five (brown to green) quintiles, as one might expect.
In terms of housing and residence based data three general areas commonly stand out, the Auckland CBD for large number of rented apartments, limited vehicle access, and time at residence (including overseas born) as relates to a young, migrant, inner city population with large numbers of students. The other areas are those of the twin zones of Mangere and Otara, and the Tamaki region, where crowding, high occupancy flats and rented dwellings stand out. Though in both time at current residence and NZ residency less than five years show quite stable populations possibly due to a high number Housing New Zealand Corporation tenancies.
Again Tamaki, Mangere, and Otara, with the addition of Papakura are pronounced as having higher proportions of single parent families, larger families, no formal qualifications, and current smokers. This pattern is largely reversed in couples without children and tertiary qualifications in which central Auckland is common area for both measures.