If you want Australia, you know where to find it.
The new-look Herald has a good survey-based story on where people want to live: they did both in-depth interviews with a moderate number of people, and a reasonably good quantitative survey (online panel-based DigiPoll).
The results say that most people in New Zealand want to live here. In a sense that’s not surprising — they are living here — and that’s especially true for Australia as an alternative, since it’s not that difficult to move.
A similar US survey a couple of years ago, by the Pew Research Center, didn’t even bother to ask about other countries, just about other places to live in the US. It’s still a reasonable comparison: different parts of the US are more different than many countries, and some don’t even seem to be in the same universe as each other. In the Pew survey, nearly half of respondents said they wanted to live in a different kind of community from where they currently live. Several major cities had nearly 40% approval rating nationwide as somewhere people would like to live: Denver topped the list at 43%, and my previous home in Seattle was at 38%.
So, even accounting for the natural bias towards saying you have chosen the right place to live, Kiwis do seem happy with their home.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Nice story. Good to see a different perspective from the usual “Everyone’s moving to Australia! Argh!” articles that appear frequently.
As another Aussie I’d like to make a comment on finances in the two countries. It’s true that Kiwis on average earn about 3/4 as much as Aussies. But 3/4 as much as just about the wealthiest country ever isn’t a bad achievement…most countries in the world would be envious. Also, some things are way more expensive in Australia than here. 1 NZD in Auckland goes about as far as 1.5 AUD in Sydney when it comes to renting a home. Even if I were in Sydney earning 30% more, I couldn’t afford to live 4km from the city like I do here. It would be hello to a 45 minute plus commute.
12 years ago